Wednesday, December 7. 2011'Tis The Season To Be ......John Linton .....very frustrated and looking for alternative employment. There is little 'joy' to be had from being involved in providing residential ADSL services but over the past few years there is even less 'joy' than usual. It's true that providing residential ADSL services provides a constant challenge and that, over the years, you develop a very interesting and enjoyable relationship with a percentage of your 'customers' whom you get to know by their given names via correspondence and other means. Some of your customers become friends despite the fact that a relationship may begin under far from friendly circumstances. The problem with any wholesale business is that, no matter how hard you try - at the 'end of the day' - your performance is often constrained by circumstances (and suppliers) that are completely beyond your ability to control. This, for instance, is the sort of letter I am seeing increasingly being sent to customers: Dear Sir, Thank you for sending the ticket reference number of this issue which helped me investigate it. I have checked on this and to what the support engineer informed you on 5th November, the reason why you're experiencing slows speeds is because there are some network congestion issues at the exchange which is affecting most customers connected to that exchange. The support engineer has informed you that issue would be fixed by 30th of November, relying on the estimation that was given to us by Telstra Wholesale. However we did request for an update today on this issue and it seems that it's going to take longer for it to be resolved. As you may understand this is beyond Exetel's control at this point but I could offer you the following options 1. We have checked on the availability of another supplier infrastructure by way of a pre-qualification check and it seems thatADSL 2 via AAPT infrastructure is currently available. This option is given to you on a special basis, as these AAPT plans by normal procedure are not available to any of the other Exetel customers on Telstra plans. However we do not guarantee the activation of this service because we have to submit the application in order to check the technical availability of the plan. Also there is bound to be 2-48 hours of downtime provided the service can be provisioned at the location. All things going well, the transfer should take no longer than 6 working days. Also, because the Telstra plan is to be cancelled whilst on contract the early cancellation fee which otherwise should apply will not be charged to you in this instance. Further we will not charge you for the plan change fee but there will be a new 12 month contract that would be initiated which is beyond our control because wholesale suppliers impose it as a minimum term. The plans available for this option are one of the plans here- : http://www.exetel.com.au/a_plan_pricing_aapt.php If you wish to go ahead with this option, please let me know and the plan that you'd like to go on, I will have this arranged for you. 2. Regrettably, if we are not able to comply with option 1, or if you do not wish to change plans, you could churn away to a different provider who better suits your needs and we will not impose the $100.00 early cancellation fee on you. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, however I will personally assist you in having this issue completely resolved to the extent that we can. Kind Regards This situation ends up with a lost, and totally pissed off, customer and it makes Exetel look uncaring and incompetent. The carrier couldn't care less that they have caused this unhappiness and will never do anything about it. The wholesaler is judged, quite rightly, to be at fault and all of the people within the wholesaler, from the first engineer who took the call, through his/her supervisor and then on up the 'chain of command' till it reaches the very top of the company, are made to feel helpless and frustrated. Everyone loses, except the carrier, who caused the problem by their own greed and incompetence in the first place. I would like another set of responsibilities whereby, if there is a problem, I can play a part in fixing it. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Tuesday, December 6. 2011Death By A Thousand Cuts........John Linton
Looking at the various aspects of business in Australia, and particularly those relating to the telecommunications business, produces a sense of unreality that hasn't been evident to me for as long as I can remember. I was too young back in brief days of the Whitlam government to be affected by the destruction of business that mindless socialism can wreak together with its destruction of a country's economy. The Hawke/Keating period was less damaging because it was ameliorated by an equal amount of totally non-socialist economic reforms that were identical to those that would have been pursued by a non-socialist government. However the sheer stupidities of the Rudd egoticities and now the promulgations of the Green dominated illegitimate Ms Faustus lead non government are becoming quite concerning. Personally I couldn't care less about "the mining tax" (sounds sensible but will almost certainly be ballsed up in the execution) nor do I have an opinion one way or another on "global warming initiatives" (Nothing Australia does will make the slightest difference to whatever is currently happening). I assume all governments make major errors which are quickly forgotten about when the real facts intrude upon fanciful posturing (the education revolution, pink batts for every Australian home scheme, grocery watch, petrol watch - the list is endless) and in any case the waste of money such posturings cost pale into insignificance compared to ludicrous military expenditures (12 submarines, multi-billion dollar aircraft spring to mind) and non-action on all the other key things Australian governments of any political persuasion indulge in (water for an arid continent, an education system that might educate someone). But the two most recent things that have 'surfaced' are indications of how this particular bunch of wankers is proposing to make business ever more difficult. If you haven't read about the proposed "bullying in the workplace" legislation then I won't bore you with the details because I would assume that they would produce the same level of sheer incredulity in you as they did in me. I had no idea that anyone who was not locked up in a padded cell could have dreamed up that an employer could be deemed responsible for the individual acts of their employees to the extent of facing huge fines or jail time if some employee claimed that they were being bullied in an incredible range of ways by either other employees or by the employer who could be deemed as bullying by doing something like asking an employee to carry out some task that was "inappropriate to their educational or commercial qualifications". Have these people never gone to primary school? Even I can't believe that the current bunch of twinkies in Canberra can consider inflicting this type of insanity on Australian employers: ....socialism gone totally insane. Then there was Whine Swan's dummy spit on introducing a currency exchange tax on "overseas payments" two days ago whereby he proposes to introduce a new tax on all foreign currency purchase transactions. While obviously a 'winged' "policy" that he hasn't given more than a billionth of a second thought to (other than to see himself as the total tosser that he is). What a good idea to tax Australian business that buys capital goods that are essential to run their Australian businesses from overseas manufacturers who require payment in $US or Euros or Yen etc. Is he going to tax the banks on their vast 'overseas' borrowings paid in $US? Is he going to tax airline ticket payments on 'foreign' airlines? How is taxing foreign currency transactions in Australian's interests?....except to a government that has pissed away tax receipts on social adventurism and now needs "to return the budget to surplus". Clearly a 'federal treasurer' who lacks the fiscal knowledge and discipline to manage the office 'tea money tin'. I could go on but I fear for my physical health which after so many years of working long hours is no longer likely to support making a living. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Monday, December 5. 2011Mobile Telephony - Still A Bewidering BusinessJohn Linton I seldom take any interest in communications developments on the sub continent as they usually simply mirror the developments of their international owners but I read this earlier this morning: because we have been looking at what, if anything, Exetel should do with mobile telephony offerings in early 2012. While Sri Lanka is by no means similar to India in telecommunications technologies I have noticed on my dozen or so visits to Colombo that mobile telephone tariffs are amazingly low - much lower than those in Australia and far lower than can be accounted for by the lower personnel costs of doing business in Sri Lanka than in Australia. As you will see if you scan read this article one of India's major mobile suppliers (part owned by Singapore Telecom) suffered a massive drop in profit over the past three months and had to raise its tariffs by 20% while saying more raises are to come. At a US cent a minute for most call types it is hard to see just how any sort of profit can be made at all but they do. Both Telstra and Optus constantly report both subscriber growth and profit growth from their mobile telephone operations in Australia which seems quite an extraordinary achievement until you look at this company's results. I have never understood the mobile telephony business in Australia as the 'capped plan' scenarios endemic to that industry have always revolted me - being the simple minded person that I am and the never ending pursuit of customer numbers via ever greater discounting is not something I have ever understood....entirely my limitation. So, the article caught my eye in passing and as we are looking at a new 'deal' from Optus in terms of mobile wholesale pricing it was worthwhile considering what was happening to another Singapore Telecom company albeit in a completely different set of market places. If a Singapore Telecom partly owned company in India can make a sensible, albeit reduced, profit in India at tariffs of one cent a minute what sort of profits are they making in Australia at tariffs more than ten or twenty times that? Obviously quite considerable ones......even allowing for the handset 'give aways' and huge wholesale commissions and the massive advertising bills. Not that affects Exetel in any way - we are a tiny supplier of mobile services and always will be. What it does seem to confirm is that we do not have any ability to provide mobile telephone services - even for 'completeness' sake and we never have had although we have been doing it for almost as long as we have been in existence. So, despite its apparent irrelevance to anything happening in Australia, the article did underline why Exetel should have nothing to do with mobile telephony services in the future as it can never become part of a sensible 'offering' and we can never compete (in terms of a sensibly competitive service) with large suppliers - either carriers or wholesalers. We simply will never have the volumes that allow us to do that. Strange source of information that will influence such a decision after so many years. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Sunday, December 4. 2011Money, Like Democracy And The Media.....John Linton .....not as useful as they might once have been. We have a week to complete the planning for the remainder of this financial year but we made little/no progress over the past seven days. In fact because of the involvement of other people this year we are falling further behind because of the need to wait endlessly for people new to the process to actually grasp that they have to do real work rather than present thoughtless and meaningless 'ideas' that have zero cogency and less research. Worse is their tendency to criticise well thought out concepts and plans based on their own non-research and therefore failure to understand that future plans can't be based on 'the past' except in the most general senses. It was always going to be this way as Exetel's needs for more involvement from more people if the future of the company, small as it is, was to be entrusted to more of its employees which is a necessary path to be taken if Exetel is to continue to develop. Sadly that brave initiative is going to take longer than initially estimated. Which highlights the problem that companies of the awkward size of Exetel always confront if they wish to grow beyond the bounds of their founders ideas, and possibly more importantly, ideals. I mention ideals, not in any philosophical concept but as a hard core reality that if a commercial entity has objectives other than making as much money as possible then attempting to transfer planning, let alone management, to people who only ever worked for money adds a difficulty that 'normal' companies do not encounter. I hadn't fully realised this particular difficulty until very recently and having thought about it I am coming to the conclusion that it is going to be a real problem.To find people competent to run a growing business in difficult times is never going to be easy. To find people who are prepared to sacrifice at least some of their personal financial ambitions to participate in a company that doesn't put financial achievement very high on its 'priority list' looks like being impossible - and quite rightly. So the issue becomes how to accommodate these diametrically opposed views? The simplest solution is to abandon the ideals on which the company was 'founded' to accommodate the desires of the people who now comprise the vast majority of the company - and that may well prove to be a way forward....at least for all but a handful of the longer serving people who believe that commercial entities have more responsibilities than simply making as much money as possible....laudable though that ambition may be in simple terms. The problem this issue raises, in the event that it is a problem at all, is purely for a very few Exetel employees. However those few are very, very important people as they are at the very core of having built Exetel from the beginning and remain essential to the operation of the company today. For the first time it is necessary to consider whether the 2012 Exetel will be a company that they are happy to continue to work with anything like dedication they have delivered, day after day, over the past seven plus years. What would Exetel do if they decided not to do that? Any ten cent personnel management text book will provide simplistic, and totally vacuous, advice on this sort of issue so maybe I need to invest ten cents and solve my problem. I think it is a far more seriously fundamental issue.....I somehow doubt it has a 'ten cent' answer. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Saturday, December 3. 2011While I Understand That God Is Infallible.......John Linton ......Wise Beyond Wisdom, Ineffable and Omnipotent I sometimes wonder whether she really knew what she was doing when she invented democracy - unless it was as a cruel and enduring punishment for the human species. I understand that it might have worked for some of the more logical species like whales, emperor penguins, termites and elephants but how could she ever have expected it to work for humans? Especially after the Garden Of Eden incident which have must have clearly demonstrated to her that, no matter how well off humans are, they will always and immediately do something terminally stupid for no other reason than they have no ability to consider the consequences of their actions if they think they can get away with it. The stupidity that: "Democracy may not be perfect; but it is better than all of the previous alternatives" which is variously ascribed to a lot of people who should have known better (including Churchill) is self evidently just plain wrong. Starting with the Athenians in the 6th century BCE whom God first blessed with this craziness more people have been enslaved (one way or another) or died in prosecuting either civil or external wars than any other form of 'government'. All forms of 'democracy' involve the subjugation of the many to the few who then proceed to pillage the territories inflicted with this pernicious form of 'government' and as many other territories that they are able to be reached until they are deposed by the many who reach a point where they feel able to do something about it. Democracy, being based on the pre-eminent gross stupidity that all people can have an 'equal say' in how themselves and their territories can be governed tries to ignore the base tenets of humanity (as epitomised in motherhood, families and all education processes for the first 16 plus years of a human's life) that NO human can even feed themselves, dress themselves or carry out any other action required to keep themselves alive, healthy and able to learn anything useful unless they are specifically, and repeatedly instructed how and when to do so. Has anyone ever seen an example of humanity that crawled out of the womb and was able to manage any aspect of their life without precise and constant instruction for the best part of two decades? Why then, if this previous statement is correct would God think that these helpless individuals are capable of making any sort of decision let alone decisions that result in selecting people to 'govern' their future actions and opportunities? It makes absolutely no sense at all. Or look at it another way. No one expects to hire an accountant that hasn't spent some years at university learning accounting. No-one expects to hire an airline pilot who hasn't been trained to fly small aircraft then gradually progressing to larger aircraft (always under the instruction of an experienced pilot ready to instantly correct the many errors of judgment made in the process of learning) before entrusting the lives of passengers to their care and attention....and so on and so on for an infinite number of examples. But 'governing' a whole population? No problem - just put that in the hands of a bunch of self serving wastrels selected by a bunch of people with absolutely no idea of any aspect of the process with even less idea of the capabilities of the people seeking election...and never questioning why these election seekers would be giving up their well paid careers to take on a job that would not pay them anything like what they currently earn? Or worse; elect someone who has never actually succeeded in anything at all so far in their life to whom an MP's remuneration would be a step up! There are so many incredible stupidities that comprise "democracy" that you have to wonder what Edenesque transgression modern humanity has committed to make God so pissed off with us to inflict her concept on so many nations around the globe. Roll on the Oligarchic revolution.One final, and most obvious condemnation of democracy - if it's so good as a method of selecting a government why doesn't it get used in any other aspect of human society? Does anyone suggest the military forces of all current 'democracies' are democratic? The civil service? The police? Any corporate entity? Universities? Schools? Sporting teams? Hmmmmmm? Let me finish by quoting the late WSC: "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter" (I prefer that to the quote of his that I used near the beginning) Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011
Friday, December 2. 2011Might As Well Check Chicken Entrails......John Linton .....for all the knowledge and understanding the High Court will bring to understanding copyright theft.....at least it would produce a quick decision with no enormous costs. I read through this earlier this morning: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/HCATrans/2011/323.html not because I have any interest in any possible ruling next year but because I wanted to get some idea as to whether the AFACT advocates would be able to rescue the dog's breakfast of the case they tried to run originally (it appears they couldn't from what I read). It would be extremely difficult, even for a far more able advocate than AFACT have selected, to try and explain the complex intricacies of how people steal property via BitTorrent to completely computer illiterate senior citizens and clearly it is beyond the selected advocate's abilities based on this transcript. Once again the sheer inanity of the line of 'argument' pursued beggars the imagination. It is surprising, to me, that the law makers in this country haven't worked out decades ago that the system of asking non-competent persons in their retirement years to rule on topics, subjects and incidents of which they can have no conceivable knowledge is truly ridiculous way of shaping a country's laws and observances. There has to be a better way of controlling Australia's lawless elements whether they be a larcenous teenager stealing movies or a corporate mega crook stealing billions - or even a dumbest of governments infringing human rights. Three thousand years of emulating the 'village elder' tradition of summary rulings must be seen to be obviously inadequate by now? ......and that is all the Australian High Court is....a bunch of politically appointed 'mates' approaching senility getting one last opportunity of getting their snout in the trough before the men/women in white coats finally wheel them away. So, some time in 2012 a bunch of senile senior citizens will rule on a dog's breakfast set of contentions. Then what happens? At best nothing at all - because, despite the separation of powers or whatever cliche justifies the enormous expense of the High Court no one involved in making whatever ruling is made will understand anything more about the issue than when the whole fiasco began. The French parliament legislated on this issue and, irrespective of how you view either the French, their assembly or their views on democracy that is the only way any 'progress' will be made. I drive on the right hand side of the road because I am told to - no-one is interested in my views on my rights to drive anywhere else - it's the 'law' and anyone with contrary views is going to get in a whole heap of trouble. I can't walk in to a bank and help myself to the teller's cash draw because I think the bank charges too much interest (it's against the law) nor can I drive a new car away from a dealership because I think Porsche charges too much for a 911 (its against the law). The 'copyright infringement' nonsense can only be resolved by Federal legislation and, as interventionist as the current High Court members may be viewed - they can't enact legislation - so whatever 'ruling' they make cannot progress anything. So, apart from the morons, the current nonsense occurring in Canberra has no meaning for anyone at all other than the lawyers who will be paid enormous sums of money to reveal how incredibly unknowledgeable they are on a simple subject which they will never be able to grasp let alone elucidate for the retirement home residents they will be talking to. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Thursday, December 1. 2011November - A Good MonthJohn Linton November is generally a good month for Exetel and this November followed that 'pattern' with record revenue and positive 'pointers' in many of our market places. After three incredibly difficult years it is nice to get the feeling that, perhaps, the worst is behind us and we can now relax, if only a little, from the massive grind that trying to operate a business of our size in increasingly difficult times has imposed on us - or at least on Exetel's senior management. I am far too old to be either an optimist or a pessimist in terms of looking at the future but, for the first time in a very long time, I see more than 'bleakness' in the early months of the new calendar year. Perhaps there will be a chance to do something 'creative' and exciting in the new calendar year instead of taking the endless 'defensive' decisions we have been forced to take for more than three years now. I may not be very good at a vast array of things but I am definitely at my very worst when I am involved in 'defensive' operations. We put in place a new low end ADSL2 plan yesterday (a 5gb peak/5gb off peak plan for $4.50 plus $20.00 for a PSTN line) which is the lowest 'real' ADSL2 offering available for those more than 50% end users who download only a few gigabytes of data a month. While these new plans (complementing the previously announced 10gb peak/10 gb off peak for $9.50 per month) will not 'excite' heavy down loaders they do address the majority of users of our residential ADSL services - and, I assume, the majority of users of most other ISPs - with the possible exception of TPG. We will also put in place similar low cost ADSL2 plans for business users over the next 48 hours and begin an escalating program of selling to the SME market places via several new initiatives on the basis of attempting to duplicate the success we have enjoyed in the corporate market places over the past three years. Our major 'concerns' in moving in to the last six months of this financial year are all to do with how we continue to improve, and improve at a faster rate, our progress in addressing the corporate market places we have had continuing success with over the past three years. During that time we have put many of the required processes in place to allow more progress to be made but we have still got a very long way to go to begin to achieve what we should be able to. As we finalise the 'figures' for the start of 2012 it is more and more obvious that we need to do many things differently to the ways we do them today and that is a challenge that I am not sure can be accomplished as simply as I had previously hoped. If that proves to be the case, and we have to spend more time 'preparing' for the 'great leap forward' then I am not entirely convinced that I can put in another year of 'the same'.....three years of 'the same' has sapped my resolution and certainly long exhausted my reserves of 'forgiveness' - old age is a tyrannical master. December is always a difficult month because of the actual public holidays, the de facto public holidays between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve and the fact that a large percentage of Australians take annual holidays beginning in the second week of December. These issues always present challenges to trying to maintain 'momentum' in all sorts of aspects of business life and make all sorts of different demands on 'planning' and operational staff. Our current outlook is very positive for the month and, with a bit of luck, will propel us into the dog days of the first two weeks of January with some sort of momentum that has been lacking over the past three Januaries. The first day of December signals the true end of this calendar year which I, for one, will be glad to see reach its end. It remains as important as ever, perhaps more important than ever, to use these days to fully plan and do the preliminary real work that will ensure we have the very best chances of making the last six months of this financial year as productive as possible - starting from 1/1/2012 - not some much later date. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Wednesday, November 30. 2011VoIP - The Final Residential FrontierJohn Linton We added another lower end Optus ADSL2 plan yesterday following the relative success of the 10gb plus 10 gb plan we added some ten days ago - this time a 5gb plus 5 gb plan. The reason for doing this is that, despite all the 'air time' given to unlimited a terabyte plans the fact remains that a very, very large percentage of Exetel's user base doesn't exceed more than a few gigabytes usage a month - Annette and I have never exceeded 1 gbyte of usage in any month since Exetel began providing ADSL services and we both use it for many hours each day, seven days a week. When we looked at how our lower usage customer's usage patterns had changed over the past two years we found little or no difference to them over that time and realised that we had progressively moved away from any really low end offerings over the past two plus years. One of the reasons has been that as IP costs have continued to fall and as the newer caching clusters from first Akamai and now Google have become ever more efficient that cost has more than halved over the past year alone and fallen by 75% overall. Unfortunately back haul costs have not fallen very much but the net cost of providing 'gigabytes' has continued to drop quarter by quarter. This has meant, with some, very much appreciated, accommodation from Optus that we can now offer a new lower cost ADSL2 service to those customers who (like us) use the internet constantly but for purposes that don't require 'terabytes' of downloads. The new plan at $24.50 for ADSL2 including $20.00 a month for a PSTN line is the lowest, genuine, ADSL2 offer on the Australian market and allows Exetel to begin to return to its initial basis of being in the residential telecommunications business. Telephone call costs still remain an issue in Australia with VoIP providing the only sensible solution to any 'wire line' user. Exetel's (courtesy of Optus) unlimited local, STD and calls to Optus mobile 'package' at $10.00 together with the $20.00 line rental offers, by far, the lowest PSTN service for those customers who still have some 'fears' about VOIP or at least their capabilities of implementing a home VoIP solution. While an ever increasing number of Exetel residential customers are using Exetel VoIP (and presumably many others are using another providers VoIP services) there are still customers who find VoIP, for whatever reasons, not something they are prepared to use. These customers seem to be evenly divided between not wanting to pay f0r VoIP hardware and the 'fear' of whatever they perceive VoIP to lack in terms of capabilities and reliability. Over the next two months we will try and find a way to alleviate the incorrect concerns while simultaneously finding a better way of highlighting the more obvious advantages of using VoIP (much lower cost international and mobile calls) and see what can be done about reducing the initial hardware costs. We think that the 'technical fears' of setting up VoIP could be an issue and one of the 'ideas' we are mulling over is providing 'unlimited technical set up and trouble shooting support' for VoIP services and, possibly, payg amortisation of the hardware over a twelve or twenty four month contract....plus any other 'innovations' we can come up with. Any suggestions would be welcomed. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011
Tuesday, November 29. 2011"Real Work" - Not Too Many People Seem To Do AnyJohn Linton It isn't easy doing many things in life, assuming that you actually work at something on a continuing basis that requires you to make some decisions by yourself and take responsibility for their outcome. It's even harder if you rely, in some ways, on working with other people to bring about all or some portions of the results you are attempting to achieve. Almost every mother has known how hard this is since there was sentient life on the planet and a relatively high proportion of working human males eventually come to the same conclusions. Malcolm Fraser added his, derivative and truncated, phrase that summed up his observations of life generally although he should have ascribed it to its real author. As another year rapidly reaches its close I am wondering whether I have the courage for life to be delightful.....or whether GBS had it completely wrong? As a 'semi responsible male' I don't have the luxury of feeling sorry for myself or to allow any similar emotion to intrude into my life but there are some times when such indulgences seem to be highly desirable. Fortunately, I had an upbringing based mainly on the strictures of poverty leavened with a rigorous education in times much tougher than the overwhelming majority of Australians born after 1945 can begin to contemplate. Those facets of life at impressionable ages provide a semi sound background to deal with most of the stupidities you encounter in adulthood - assming, as a male, you ever reach that stage of life. However every now and again, like right now, I do get totally p***ed off at the sheer pettiness and uncaring attitudes of people I come in contact with in 'business' and it does result in making me wonder whether "it's all worth it". So before extending this rant I will simply say that 1) no it isn't and 2) there is no other choice so get on with it. I think the last three years has been tougher than any other period of my business life and I am sure that would be the case for many other people who actually do any real work in the telecommunications industry in smaller companies. The definition "real work" isn't easy to put into context as I seem to run into a lot more people who impute that phrase to themselves whereas I seem to observe that they have never done any 'real work' for as long as I have known them. Perhaps I fail to be able to define 'real work' correctly and that would be entirely my problem. Perhaps as Australia has moved to a 'services based economy' and fewer and fewer people either make things, grow things or dig things out of the ground 'real work' has become harder and harder to define. 'Real Work' is like 'real money'. The issuing of credit cards to 18 year olds, often before they have a job, and EFT replacing a wage 'packet (in which there were bank notes and, gasp!, coins) has somehow made "money" something different today to what it was previously....an absolute necessity to say alive until the next Friday. I recently attended a 'careers afternoon' at a local North Sydney school (invited as a 'local businessman and employer') and was fascinated/horrified at what some of the boys said which described their understanding of what 'working life' might comprise and what their income expectations were. In general terms they seemed to expect to go to university and then be paid around $80,000 in their first year while they 'learned the ropes' and then rapidly progress to senior executive level earning their first million a year well before they were 30 - most said 25. The people from 'industry' plus the school teachers present said nothing to even gently contradict these pretty generally held expectations - I merely nodded when asked for a contribution. (anecdotal 'evidence' suggests that more than a few of those year twelve boys will join their predecessors 'doing drugs' and living with their parents with no income of $1millon a year but whatever the dole, sorry - income support - is these days). I have obviously lost touch with the 'realities' that now exist and I doubt that I can play any further part in today's business market places. I wonder how long that has been the case and I just didn't notice? Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011
Monday, November 28. 20112012 - The Year Of Mobile Broadband?John Linton It's very quiet in the international media concerning telecommunications companies and issues. Basically, apart from the spat between AT&T and The FCC regarding the proposed takeover of T-Mobile there appears to be nothing happening. Similarly, the Australian telecommunications media is eerily quiet apart from the massive over reporting about non events connected in some way with the 'NBN2'. Nothing on real news of either companies or technologies which I find that situation to be strange as in the US, the EU and in Australia the introduction of more and more LTE services would have been quite 'news worthy' I would have thought. But then I clearly view things differently to Australian media writers. I only raise this issue because of the possibilities of Telstra 'wholesaling' its LTE mobile services in the first half of 2012 either as mobile telephony with high speed data tethering or as a standalone mobile data service. I have no specific knowledge of whether or not this may happen - only the obfuscatory words of various Telstra 'spokes people' and I lack the Byzantine mental processes that could make any sense of those - but the implications appeared to be that it might be a possibility at some future time. Given the various pricing scenarios that are always part of Telstra's 'wholesale' offerings it is unlikely to be a very attractive possibility - at least initially - to a company of Exetel's size but it is something to be considered as neither Optus nor Vodafone seem to have any hope of catching up with Telstra in this product category any time in the foreseeable future - and certainly not in the areas that we are mainly interesting in providing such services. Exetel's progress in providing mobile broadband services has been a continuing disappointment to me since we established our interest in this technology more than five years ago. We have made almost no progress in establishing a viable mobile broadband offering that is widely accepted although the business users who like our back end management processes are all remarkably 'loyal' with almost none moving to other providers once they sign up and use our add on services. So the years have passed and nothing much has changed in the larger business markets - but we tend to believe that there is now an opportunity in small business usage that could be a genuine option to provide wireless broadband as a real back up to an ADSL or fibre small business service. Currently a 'tethered' mobile handset can provide a measure of back up for a small business ADSL service that loses connectivity and will therefore take 24 to 72 hours (possibly more) to restore. However it would be better to provide an 'auto fail over' MBB solution for all the obvious reasons. So, as we have played around with a new small business offering, with some sort of 'magic box' and an affordable stand by wireless broadband capability, we are much closer to delivering such a service than we have ever been in the past.....not quite there yet....but so much closer than at any previous time. We continue to work on a 'final solution' that includes ADSL/Fibre with wireless broadband back up and affordable business VoIP that is supported via unlimited telephone engineering advice and guidance.....plus on site help at a charge if that is required for more complex services. With a bit of luck and some better buying on our part we may almost be there - with the one remaining 'obstacle' being what speed mbb back up service is required to make this solution really practical? The best combination is fast fibre plus LTE - however that is not on any immediate horizon. If either/both become available then 2012 could be the year of mobile broadband - even though it will mainly be used statically. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Sunday, November 27. 2011Eight Years Ago.......John Linton ....almost to the day, we decided to start a business providing communications services to residential and business users. At that time Telstra totally dominated that business and, apart from mobile telephone services, had no competition of any size or sort making it relatively easy to find a 'niche' marketplace from which to begin to grow a viable business. At that time, or very shortly thereafter, some 1,000 other people had similar ideas and, at least according to the ABS the reselling of Telstra ADSL infrastructure based services was booming all over the country creating miniscule/tiny/very small 'competitors' to Telstra. It is hard to know how many of those tiny companies started up and then closed their doors - but it would be a large number well in excess of 99% I would have thought....but I don't really know nor do I have any data on which to base that assessment other than observationally. But as I write the final 'text' describing Exetel's new targets and aspirations for the 2012 calendar year I am reminded just how very different they are to what I wrote eight years ago at about this November day. In revenue dollar terms, we haven't come that far (revenues for Exetel are obviously far greater than the zero we had at this time in 2003 but in the scheme of the telecommunications industry they remain miniscule) and we are still an insignificant company by all measures except to our customers. The fact that we have survived at all when so many other companies that started before us and after us have disappeared is, possibly, the only notable achievement we can point to....if we were the notable achievement pointing to type of people - which I don't think we are. I am happy that we have more customers today than we had in November 2003 (none) and I am, personally, very happy that some of the first customers we had mid February 2004 are still with us. Doubtless other communications providers could also claim that 'distinction'. Quite possibly Telstra can claim to have had many customers for over 100 years - if for no other reason than those customers have never had any choice as to which company provided their wire line communication services. Practically every aspect of that start up business has changed not least that we now have almost 150 employees (whom we pay) as opposed to the three directors who worked for nothing for the first few months of Exetel's 'life'. We also have business premises in two cities in two countries rather than the spare bedroom in our Sydney home crammed with three computers, three telephones a fax machine and a printer by the time we abandoned it for sub let rental premises from a decidedly dodgy 'land lord' from whom we had to 'escape' shortly before his 'stand over' father was shot dead in his last 'stand over' assignment outside a NSW country town. We now have 13 PoPs with over $3 million dollars worth of equipment in every State of Australia plus New Zealand and Colombo compared to the $50 thousand dollars of equipment in one rented rack in Sydney's Clarence Street. Those are the most obvious signs of development over the past eight years....as I write new budget figures for capital expenditure and reference spread sheets detailing the rapidly growing expenses for personnel acquisition and development costs. So much has changed over the past eight years that the Exetel of today, even in its minor ways, is totally different to the start up Exetel there seems to be no point of similarity. Fortunately, in terms of the true bases of the business, nothing has changed. We remain totally different to every other company with which we compete in every aspect of WHY we are in business and what we are seeking to achieve by setting up and operating a commercial business in Australia that puts the interests of its customers, its employees and the good of the countries in which it operates ahead, well ahead, of profit making (and that s one thing we have been spectacularly successful in achieving) or other 'standard commercial interests'. We are still setting aside a very large proportion of any small profit we earn to attempt to protect endangered fauna, avia and flora. We still aim to provide communication services to businesses and residential users a lower prices than any other provider without compromising on speed or quality. We still provide all of our employees with a 'no fire' policy which we have only had to breach some three times in eight years.....and only under extreme 'provocation'. So many parts of the 'text' of the 2012 operating plan are eerily similar to the words I wrote at this time in 2003. Either those objectives have stood the test of eight very difficult years, with the last three years being almost impossibly difficult, or there is no fool like an old fool. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Saturday, November 26. 2011Copyright Theft - The End Of The Tunnel?John Linton I was interested in this update: http://www.zdnet.com.au/isps-propose-copyright-notice-scheme-339326850.htm not because it indicated that the Federal Government and an ISP like Telstra were prepared to agree to deal with on line piracy, it is still a long way away from actually putting some sort of workable scheme into place, but because there is now a public consensus that stealing other people's property is rampant and a really bad thing. Presumably any further attempt to justify such practices is now at an end and no further "it's my right to take whatever I want because it's wrong for the makers to charge for it" will be seen as the infantile nonsense they always were. Then again...... Despite any claims to the contrary, it has always been a very simple process to automatically process any infringement notice and on send it to the IP 'owner' at the time of the alleged infringement. It has been equally easy to allow the alleged infringer to reply denying any infringement and letting the whole matter drop. As the next time an infringing customer gets a notice they could be using a different IP address (either by changing their IP themselves or via the policy of their ISP to allocate a different IP each time the customer logs on introduced.) it would only require the ISP to log the infringement notices against the customer's account (rather than the IP address) to ensure simply changing the IP address doesn't 'defeat' the process of three strikes and you get a termination notice or whatever policy is eventually introduced - in the event that happens. There will need to be some sort of legislation introduced that requires ISPs to maintain adequate records of IP usage going back over some reasonable time and that, assuming it happens, will take some time. The woosie nature of the 'education emails' and the whole prolonged process is a major nuisance for the ISP but can, depending on what may be finally required, be totally automated so that no cost is incurred in complying with whatever is required. So, it appears that at some time in the future there will be an end to copyright infringement or, at least a massive reduction because at least reasonably honest parents of larcenous children will put an end to that source of infringements. The 'grown up children' may be another matter. Adult thieves may be quite prepared to change ISPs to continue to pillage other peoples assets which would require any proposed legislation to include a 'register' of names/addresses of people who have had their connection terminated for copyright infringement - but I think that will never happen. The proposed processes as they stand seem easy enough to implement and will, almost certainly, succeed in significantly reducing copyright infringement if they are ever expanded to 100% from the ludicrous '100 per month per ISP'. By publicly agreeing that copyright theft is a bad thing and will cause some sort of inconvenience to the perpetrators the current nonsensical defences of their theft by the thieves that indulge in it will be shown up for just how stupid it is and, presumably, a lot of parents will get a reminder of just how bad their parenting has been. I can't see any 'down side' from the full implementation of a real process.....other than the increase of public service drones. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Friday, November 25. 2011Advertising....I've Heard That Word Somewhere.John Linton Fibre services, while still a tiny component, of total residential services, continue to evoke more interest where they are available. While the Tasmanian 'experiment' (a cynical election 'winner' ploy by that bunch of crooks posing as a federal government) remains a disaster other areas are showing much better take ups. The 'NBN2' locations are still very slow but Telstra's Point Cook, South Brisbane and some of the Opticom locations are beginning to generate a slightly more positive order flow. Still very small but noticeably increasing and enough for us to try out some different 'marketing' ideas this weekend in Townsville by running the first ever newspaper 'ad' in Exetel's 'history'. It is only one of some different ideas for promoting ADSL services in regional Australia and perhaps my liking for that particular city contributed to the decision. The trouble with NBNCo services is that they are so patchy in the places they are now available that 'advertising' is impossible and the fact that there is no NBNCo provided availability look up tools makes it very difficult to do any sort of 'general' promotion. Looking in to the future across 2012 nothing gets any better in NBNCo terms with, despite all claims to the contrary, very little additional coverage becoming available. So it becomes quite a challenge to promote fibre services in any meaningful way other than to contact our own ADSL customers whose details are obviously known to us....and even with a free install/free trial not a surprisingly low percentage of those took up the offer. So more widely 'promoting' NBNCo services to residential users poses a real problem over the coming months and the real target marketplace, small business, verges on impossible to promote to. At the moment the only NBNCo orders we are getting are coming from our own web site or from the NBNCo web site that simply lists Exetel as an NBNCo re-seller. The challenge is to find a way of promoting NBNCo fibre to other ADSL users in the limited areas of the various towns where fibre is available. So we will now and try, for the next month or so, to work out whether or not we can successfully promote NBNCo and other fibre services in the areas where they are available from Exetel by print advertising and perhaps radio advertising as well. It's almost 20 years since I have used such advertising to promote products in regional Australia (and New Zealand and South West England) and, although that was successful over several years I have no current knowledge and nor has anyone else within the company..... ....so we are going to have to learn very, very quickly about print and radio advertising and also other more esoteric promotion media of which we have less than zero knowledge. Quick learning curves are OK - we have learned to do so many new things over the past almost eight years. We will use Townsville as the base for trying out these new ideas because (ignoring my personal affinity with the city) it is an ideal size and has NBNCo infrastructure as well as a large ADSL user base and, more importantly, a large small business base with a realistic number of competent companies providing IT services. It will give us the opportunity of trying out various promotional ideas with some reasonable prospects of 'success' while also giving us the opportunity of closely analysing the results and being able to work out the financial practicalities of extending the coverage areas based on real data. Who knows - we might use adverting to promote Exetel residential and business services in 2012? Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Thursday, November 24. 2011It's Very Different In Residential ADSL Marketplaces NowJohn Linton Sales of all services continue to get stronger following the normal November pattern established over as many decades as I have been associated with commercial life in Australia. Over the last two years the November 'surge' has started later and continued well into December for most services. It is not anything dramatic but always good to see and nice that with so many changes occurring that some positive things can still be 'relied' on. We continue to grind away at making the remaining changes to the business plan for the start of 2012 and that process is always assisted by the good things that happen in November and the first half of December. The main issue that we are faced with for this year is what 'attitude' we take to residential ADSL in 2012. Unless Telstra renews a more vigorous 'win back' campaign or TPG finds a way of offering unlimited services at a lower price and delivering a better quality then it appears, at least at the moment, that we have 'ridden out' those particular storms with net loss/net gain from those providers returning to a slight, but slightly increasing, positive return month on month. Losses to companies such as Internode/iinet/iPrimus are almost zero and have been for some time and only Dodo (with major assistance from Optus) have emerged on the 'churn away' consideration. So, after three years of ever higher rates of churn from wave after wave of Telstra 'win back' campaigns residential ADSL sales are returning to 'normal'. Good to see, but what will happen in 2012? I haven't got any real ideas other than it is now 'calmer' than it has been since mid 2008 and there has, very definitely, been some very significant changes in the competitors in ADSL services in all market places. My views are limited by what I see happening in Exetel's 'world'. What I see is that Internode is no longer as well regarded as it was prior to the start of 2009 and iinet, apart from its ongoing purchases, is a non-event in any competitive situation. TPG has made a lot of progress over the past three years but appears to be running out of the ability to deliver on its 'marketing' promises and faces the same losses to Telstra that all other providers have been subjected to. Perhaps it's the changes we have made to managing the ADSL residential 'marketing program' that have caused the turnaround or perhaps its that all residential suppliers are exhausted and 'punch drunk' from the unceasing Telstra onslaughts that seem to have been going on 'forever'. It's very hard to decide what to do with residential ADSL over the coming year. The best option seems to be to work more closely with Optus to try and take advantage of the 'exhaustion' of so many of previously significant competitors to slowly grow our customer base. With the Telstra/NBNCo deal due to be signed 'soon' that will mean that Telstra's residential ADSL prices to wholesale customers and Telstra Retail will be 'regularised' - that is if you are a naive moron - because, of course, that will never happen. What will happen is some pretense of that which will have to pay lip service to redressing the current massive imbalance at some future point of time. So, our remaining decision is just how to offer residential ADSL and small business ADSL services in the new calendar year. Is it time to be more aggressive? Or is it possible to come up with some truly unique offering? Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 Wednesday, November 23. 2011What Is The Future Of The 'NBN2'?.....John Linton .....as viewed by Telstra? If you read this brief article: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/280919,telstra-plans-national-cable-upgrade.aspx you would have to wonder why Telstra would be doing such a thing if they actually believed that NBNCo would survive beyond any future change of government. There are obvious reasons why a current fibre network would need to be enhanced - because current customers would need more capacities and facilities - but the question remains - why do it now? If there is a change of federal government within the next two years then, barring a massive change of heart by the Australian electorate the bunch of doctrinaire morons currently feeding from the trough will be replaced by some other mob who have made it clear, at least currently, that they will scrap the current misadventure and do 'something else'. Having a government communications company makes as much sense in the 21st century as having a government run car manufacturing company - for all the same reasons. However, having a privately run company running a government funded and controlled communications company doesn't make that much more sense.....but that appears to be the only alternative. My, once across lightly, view is that Malcolm Turbull (either as PM or Minister For The Whatever It Is Going To Be Called At The Time) will simply call a halt to the 'NBN2' roll out and then 'sell' whatever has been installed by that time (in reality not very much) to Telstra, or if both parties were really brave and the $Sing had not self destructed by then, to Optus via a 'tender' process that included some non binding commitments to do something or other in the future. Though the betting would heavily favor Telstra. This would be done after the 'new government' releases an audit of the 'NBN2' showing that the costs have blown out and that it could never be made to work financially nor operationally - and have no doubt a 'new government' could spin that line very, very effectively by simply telling the truth - if they actually could understand what that word means. The current claims and lies by the current 'government' compared to the then factual situation would be sufficient to ridicule the whole concept. So, one of the issues about the future of telecommunications in Australia is what the combination of Krudd's arrogant stupidity and Ms Faustus 'rabbit frozen in the headlights' stupidities have actually done to what Australian telecommunications users will have available to them over the coming years and who will be providing it? Despite the Labor rhetoric, that is very far from clear and is, almost certainly, not going to be a government operated national fibre network. What it is, most likely, going to be is a reversion to some version of Telecom Australia (not Telstra) in a pre-1991 version with a genuine (and I hesitate to use that word) wholesale split. Despite any view to the contrary, Australia can't afford to have more than one fixed 'wire' telecommunications provider and the only viable way of achieving that is NOT to tax payer fund another national carrier...simple financial modeling insists that is the case. So, in my opinion, Telstra Mark II will come into being within 12 months of a possible change of government with a 'controlled' pricing regime that will control whatever the 'NBN2' has become by that time.Telstra will control the network and the new and subsequent Federal governments will control the pricing. Everyone will be happy because Telstra will run the operation much more efficiently than a cobbled together new operator and the pricing will be not as expensive as it would have been if the Federal government remained trying to operate a huge commercial business. Pity it's going to remain a total shambles until that, or something like that, happens. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011 |
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