Entries by John Linton

John Linton

....a pretty good one.

We had our best new order week for residential ADSL for over a year and the best 'January' week for four years as well as all other services having excellent order weeks so whatever has changed in the various different market places continues on into a third week. That is, of course, very pleasing but not knowing what is causing it remains a source of unease as to when it is going to end - assuming it is an aberration which seems to be the only view to take right now. We also had the best ever day and week for corporate data orders in any January with the contribution from the 'new' corporate sales people in Colombo contributing to that result which is really good to see in these very early days....but that is far more easily understood - more sales people = more sales. In any event - it is much nicer to have a surprising, if inexplicable, increase in orders than to try and puzzle out the reverse.

I was invited to a very pleasant lunch yesterday with someone who 'studies' the ISP industry as part of his investment service advice business life to exchange views on what might happen over the coming year. My views are, of necessity, very 'micro' while his are by and large very 'macro' based; although they are relatively tightly focused on the various actions of iinet and TPG and the development of the 'NBN2'. It was a pleasant and useful discussion producing some new considerations and certainly gave me a much better understanding, at least financially, of what those two companies could do in the future. His understanding of what they both were trying to do in the SOHO marketplace (iinet) and the SME marketplaces (TPG) was interesting but I found difficult to comprehend.....I formed the view that if his view of what they were trying to do was correct then they would both fail in their objectives in a big way.

The fact that the residential ADSL marketplaces are at best static and, for at least some providers continually shrinking, seems to be the catalyst for renewed/new interest in "business" market places by several 'residential' ISPs. The problem that the few I have seen seem to have is that they are trying to use a residential ADSL service as a business service with the only difference being that they charge more for it and include spurious 'promises' to make it sound like something it isn't....in other words it is just a 'con'. Perhaps I am not fully informed and am not reading the 'offers' correctly? If that is the case then I obviously need a remedial English comprehension course because I don't understand what 'magic' has been used to convert a non-SLA residential service into a 99.95% up time "business service".

Exetel's business services (based on ADSL2 linked to an auto fail over wireless back up service) are making some steady progress and we will experiment with a new method of promoting some significant growth in these types of sales over the balance of January. As I have said before - finding a way to put 'our case' to the theoretical 2,000,000 soho/sme users around Australia remains the key objective for Exetel over the coming year - that and developing a service that is better than any other supplier's to those market places. If we can do that then we will be able to complete the transition we began almost three years ago. A very difficult, perhaps impossible, set of tasks....but aiming to do the impossible is a useful way of using your time.

Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2012
ABN 350 979 865 46

PS: Mega-millions made by copyright thieves:

http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/police-find-upload-mogul-in-23m-mansions-safe-room-20120120-1qa8g.html

John Linton

.......a sorry commentary on the state of today's humanity.

After the various silly statements made yesterday in the communications media and the usual chorus from the ethics bereft I thought this put it all into perspective:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204616504577171060611948408.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews

The concept of the US FBI arresting, and retaining in custody, four people in New Zealand who were the employees of a company registered in Hong Kong underlines the financial magnitude of copyright theft and the criminal hunting resources that are now being employed against it. I have no idea what a "two year FBI investigation" that culminates in actions in New Zealand costs (perhaps it was one sporadically part time junior GMan who picked up the phone to the Kiwi cops) but it doesn't sound like it was anything that trivial.

Perhaps actions like this will eventually drive home the message to copyright thieves that stealing is a pernicious activity that is anti-societal and ultimately and totally wrong? But Australian society voted to have the country run by Juliar Faustus and the rest of the dross that now stands at the pinnacle of law making in this country so what does that tell you? It tells you that Australia, like all other countries on the planet, is overwhelmingly populated by chancers and criminals of every type and magnitude and the veneer of civilisation is overstretched to the point where the underlying barbarity is clearly discernible. The 'voices' of the few 'good' people in our version of society are 'drowned out' by the Australian cult of take whatever you can as long as you are pretty certain of getting away with it and do as little as possible that doesn't directly benefit them personally. Too harsh a view? Possibly - but how many people do you know constantly act differently to this type of 'Australian'?

Personally, I know very few, whereas I know a large number who this description fits like a glove. Like the EU's finances, I have no hope that anything will change for the better in the future....it is far too late. Fifty years of irresponsible Socialism, dreadful parenting and worse education here and in the EU has ensured that theft and hand outs are the basis of every country's citizens daily way of life from Rupert Murdoch types on down to the ill bred and worse educated sub teen of the lowest societal strata - all served by the worst of the worst dross in each country's apology for a parliament.

So what? The overwhelming majority of the planet's human population have no interest in the future other than what they can see benefits them individually in the shortest of short terms. There now appears, at least to me, to be no counter balance. If you've downloaded someone else's property lately then you know what I mean. If you haven't then I think your personal honesty won't make any difference to humanity's current 'decline and fall'.....there are far too many negative contributors on the planet for the FBI, or any other law enforcement agency, to remove from their pernicious practices.

Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2012
ABN 350 979 865 46

John Linton

.....in the residential ADSL marketplaces.

I mentioned in the early days of January that orders for Exetel residential ADSL services were running at 2 - 3 times the volumes of the equivalent days of 2011. In those 'dog days' volumes are very low and it doesn't take much to distort those daily figures. However, 18 days in to the month daily residential ADSL orders remain at over 250% of the same period last year and yesterday we had our highest residential order day for over 12 months.

Another noticeable 'feature' of the order volume is that churn order sources are very different from previous months. We can never get precise numbers for 'churns' but the numbers we do collect are showing that the highest number of churns are from the small/very small ISPs who have overtaken both Telstra and TPG as the largest supplier of churn customers to Exetel. This has never happened before and must be indicative of something or other. Another strange statistic is that 'new' versus 'churn' orders have increased quite dramatically as a percentage over last January. January is usually a very strong month for 'new' orders as 'renters' favour this month and next to move premises and university students usually cancel their ADSL service in December and resign in late January through to early March....accounting for a seasonal disparity in 'new' versus 'churn'.

Telstra and TPG remain the largest single sources of churns to Exetel though Internode is becoming almost as large as TPG.....something you wouldn't have seen prior to their latest round of price increases and the takeover by iinet. Having said that, if you sum the churns from iinet, Westnet, Netspace and AAPT residential, that agglomeration is now reaching Telstra size and if current trends continue will exceed it in the near future. All in all the churn figures are showing different trends and different patterns to any previous month and certainly different sources. The new customer orders are also showing different patterns in terms of plan sizes. It is a confusing stream of data and is unprecedented in our experience which is something we need to sort out unless it 'settles down' in February.

We will have to develop some new analytics to try and find a coherent ordering pattern for these services which seem to have dramatically increased at a time when we have been seriously considering 'reducing the emphasis' we place on marketing and supporting residential ADSL services. It may, of course, just be a temporary aberration and order volumes will begin to return to 'normal' as the year begins to resume 'normal service'. Like so much of the past three plus years - it is very different to what it used to be in the 'good old days'. Perhaps this sort of anomaly will become more usual as the current changes in the suppliers to the residential ADSL marketplaces work their way through the 'system'. If the number of providers continues to become less you would expect the permutations to reduce.....at least I would have thought that would be the case.

Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2012
ABN 350 979 865 46

PS: I am confused. How is an attempt to stop theft deemed to be "censorship":

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204555904577167873208040252.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_INTL_LSMODULE

John Linton

....it's a beautiful summer morning without a cloud in the sky and no soaking humidity.

We got back around 9 pm last night to an almost Changi like reception - no-one ahead of us at immigration, bags off very quickly, waved straight out through a queueless customs and on the road home within 25 minutes of landing....maybe Australia has magicaly changed while we were away? Then I read this:

http://www.zdnet.com.au/nbn-and-tech-upgrades-critical-to-oz-report-339329847.htm

which has to rank as the most nonsensical BS yet published on the 'NBN2'. Heather Ridout is an estimable lady, good mother, devoted wife and bright enough to negotiate her way into a career that is both demanding and difficult and the only problem I have ever had with her (apart from her coziness with the current illegitimate federal government dross) is that her chauffeur parks while waiting to drive her to her office in ways that needlessly constrict the very narrow street we both live in.

To equate a giant mining company investing in technology (carbon fibre truck wheels, radio controlled ore movers, driverless trains etc) with a smaller company's need for the 'NBN2' is not just ludicrous it is wildly insane. In case it has escaped Heather's, the "journalist" who slung this piece together or anyone stupid enough to read it and believe any word of it - every word in it is total crap. Business already is the major user of high speed internet (the only thing the 'NBN2' may provide to smaller companies at some future time) and has done for the best part of a decade. In fact there would not be a single business anywhere in Australia within reach of a fibre, an ADSL or high speed wireless service that does not use high speed data services. The thought of a mining company being influenced in their 1,000 mbps data links selection by the questionable, vastly lower, speeds of the 'NBN2' years in to the future is as ludicrous as anything I have ever seen put into print.

Exetel is deeply interested in providing high speed data to smaller businesses around the country (all capital and large regional cities have had high speed data services available since 2002) but the 'NBN2' is not going to be any sort of 'break through' in doing that - assuming it ever gets built in places that don't currently have ADSL or will get access to high speed wireless......and don't bleat that wireless will never be a substitute for fibre - it already is in an increasing number of locations around the world....including visionary giants of technological use like Colombo! However that is not the point. The point is that someone like Heather would initiate this nonsense and then someone in the Australian telecommunications media would expand on her comments and print it.

Does anyone really believe that BHP-Billiton or ConZinc Rio Tinto et alia are just waiting for the 'NBN2' to eventually be delivered so that they can 'gain the benefits of high speed data transfer'? Is the NSW Education Department or the NSW Health Department going to shut down their current Telstra Statewide fibre networks to replace them with the eventual delivery of an 'NBN2' service? (despite the ridiculous lies of Stupid Stephen and co). Exetel is finding it quite difficult to convince our current residential ADSL customers to migrate to NBNCo fibre services and I would think that any business, of whatever small size, would be similarly hesitant....based on experience to date.....

......unlike our airport experience last night nothing has changed in the Australian telecommunications media.

Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2012
ABN 350 979 865 46

PS: The Disproving Of Yet Another Claim By Juliar Faustus:

http://www.theage.com.au/business/economy-shed-jobs-at-years-end-20120119-1q7fc.html

John Linton

We went to the Botanic Gardens this morning - something we have always meant to do on previous trips but never got around to. It was a really great place and the orchids were fantastic including many, many species we have never seen before including one that was breath takingly beautiful. So we wandered around for an hour or so before beginning the walk back to our hotel. On the way we passed the American embassy which was like an armoured pill box with small widows set on a hill with tank trap type road hazards, among other things, to prevent any motor borne assault. It is a sad commentary that America, once the 'saviour of the world' is now perhaps the most hated country on the planet for so many of the world's population. What went so badly wrong?

We had a good day wandering hither and yon and completed it by eating beef sukiyaki at the hotel's Japanese restaurant  - something we haven't done since before we were married. So now we are back in our room having placed a wake up call and packed and are trying to keep ourselves awake by watching War of the Worlds. It has been a very nice, if very brief, break and it has certainly provided the relaxation that such breaks can do. I have made up my mind as to what direction Exetel now needs to take which I wasn't sure about when we landed at Changi 72 hours ago. So it has served its purpose and I feel happy that I can discuss our future plans more sensibly with Exetel's decision makers than would have been possible a few days ago.

The issue is really what does anyone aim to achieve when they set up a business as we did eight years ago? We didn't do it for money and we didn't do it to 'conquer the world' or to attempt any other of the things that seem to be involved in commercial life. We set out to do something better than anyone else  who operated in an environment that we believed we knew quite a bit about and could deliver a limited range of telecommunications services to enough end customers to make a difference to the overall marketplace. It was a pretty ambitious objective but at the time we entered the market every other provider was charging very high prices and delivering not very much for the money they were charging. Everyone were slavishly following the "Telstra less X%" pricing model and doing nothing else 'real'.

Of course a few years later the TexMex bandit arrived and Telstra began to destroy its wholesale customers and ended up charging less than wholesale prices to end users and Exetel's raison d'etre evaporated. Now Telstra charged the lowest prices in the Australian marketplace and was driving every other provider out of business. Fair enough - that's what monopolists do and the end user voted with their feet/wallet/credit card and churned away from Exetel to Telstra. Depressing but that's the way of commercial markets so no tears or recriminations - we needed to move on before we ended up like all the other ISPs who had called it quits or taken iinet's money for their business. A decision had to be made because if you are going to work for money then residential ADSL is not a place to be right now - or for the past few years.

So we need to decide what we now do about residential ADSL. The easiest option is to get out of that market - there is no money in it for Exetel - and there never has been - it doesn't lose money but it does take a lot of effort to provide such services which, if you are not making much better than break even is not a sensible way for adults to spend their time. However it isn't that straight forward now the 'NBN2' is still not going to be delivered for an unknown number of years. Much as it would financially suit Exetel's owners (including me) to sell the whole or part of the business to someone who sees more value in it than I do it can't be done right now....at least it can't be done without a lot of hassle which I am just not prepared to go through.

So - I will oppose any changes to our 'status quo'. Decision made.

Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2012
ABN 350 979 865 46

John Linton

.....in line with the published GSM standards.....how surprising - at least for the pig ignorant

While I was in Colombo I tried their 96mbps mobile telephone data service (in a store) and it really did deliver amazingly fast data streams in whatever test environment was being used. In Singapore, meanwhile, their high speed fibre data service is being rolled out at 2,400 users per week but the installation delays published in today's Straits Times article (can't find it on line) are over 3 months with no installation dates other than 'open' given since November. Given Singapore's excellence in delivering every service I have ever tried it seems that it is more difficult to deliver fibre than wireless as a 21 mbps service is readily available from every retail outlet I have seen.

Recently Exetel. along with every other Telstra wholesale customer I would think, was offered access to Telstra's low speed (7.2 mbps) 3G mobile service. As we didn't like the commercial terms we were offered we didn't get beyond the first pass read and forget status. As with all Telstra offers the costs ensure that Exetel could make zero profit from reselling the service and Telstra Retail has a faster service in any case. It did raise the issue as to whether at some future time Telstra might wholesale a realistic mobile service - but that was really the only interest. I see in the Australian media various comments concerning this latest Telstra "offer" all of which seem to be either very wrong or, possibly, Telstra is offering other wholesale customers much better deals. Either way makes no difference to Exetel.

I am advised that Optus is now offering 21 mbps 'dongles' in anticipation of its new increased speeds roll outs  and this may have some interest to our customers when it s available in their areas.....Newcastle being the first scheduled for some time in April 2012 with Sydney, Melbourne and Perth scheduled for later in the 2012. Sims for tablets and other devices will also be available later in the year. So Optus will offer LTE 'soon' with the accompanying lower latencies (maybe 20 - 25 ms) and speed capabilities up to 70 mbps down and 20 mbps up 'in the fullness of time'. Still a few months to being actually able to offer the service to Newcastle users but a real set of time lines now in place. Pricing? No idea other than it will have to be competitive with Telstra.

I am using the hotel's wifi to connect to the internet with a 130 mbps signal which is delivering timed downloads at better an 15 mbps on a consistent basis so I am assuming they have a fibre connection to a local ISP. I haven't bothered to buy a local sim to test out the 21 mbps speeds because with those claims plastered over every outlet I have seen I am assuming they are not marketing exaggerations. So high speed fibre and high speed mobile data are commonplace in Singapore and high speed mobile data may be a reality in Colombo befre it is in Sydney. I am not sure what that says about our mobile companies.....perhaps seeing Optus is owned by Singtel it says Australia is not a 'main stream' mobile marketplace?

We will buy some 21 mbps sims to begin to test the demand for such services and which marketplaces will be interested in them. As I have said for over four years - high speed wireless data makes the 'NBN2' a difficult proposition to sell if the costs favour wireless. This is going to prove to be the case for a sizeable chunk of the prospective 'NBN2' marketplaces. Now that these wireless services are becoming available for more than Telstra it will be interesting to see whether my much and long decried views on the future of residential data communications become more accurate than those of the no-nothings who made their stupid assertions at the time.

Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2012
ABN 350 979 865 46

John Linton

Awoke from a deep sleep a little after 9 am when a room attendant entered the room to tidy it up and retreated with deep apologies for disturbing us. We had gone to bed around 10 pm the previous night so it was a very long sleep caused by all the usual factors including constant time displacement plus too much to eat and drink.

A colleague sent me this over night:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html?_r=1

which, while it is rigourless opinion, raises some interesting points. I work in an open plan office at a work station identical in type and space to everyone else's on the floor and have done for the whole of Exetel's 'existence' and for several years before Exetel was created. I have no problems with spending a large portion of my working day doing the things that are involved in running our business from my 'work station'. However when I do need to think about the future or think about anything that I am having trouble understanding then I go home to do that part of my work. If I have real trouble with making any major decision (which doesn't occur that often) then I find going away to some nice hotel in somewhere (like Singapore in the current instance) usually allows a solution to be found to the most intractable of problems.

I have a particularly difficult situation to resolve in my own mind right now which I am hoping to find an answer to over the next two days (yesterday produced no sensible answers which was expected because of the jet lag and its associated disruptions - but 11 hours sleep has wiped all that away. So I agree with the author's observation that solitude is often a requirement for making major decisions or producing 'brand new' thoughts - it has always worked for me over the years. I find his references to schools adopting 'a group approach' to teaching less than interesting - it seems to imply a reduction to the lowest common denominator view of learning with is anathematic to me and everything I have ever thought that is good about the human species - I would have thought it also defies every piece of empiricism ever produced about humanity.

Nevertheless it was an interesting piece and particularly apposite for Exetel at the moment as we begin to more rapidly grow the company and need to find more 'managers' while currently adhering to our 'promote from within' personnel policies. Can we actually double the current size of Exetel in terms of personnel and quadruple the size in terms of revenues and customers using the people currently within the company to fill the escalating number of management positions? At our smallish size I still think that is possible but we are definitely running in to 'education' problems that need to be addressed and I don't know how to do that at the moment. Whenever I have talked about this particular issue with the few people I respect the answer is always to hire from without rather than solely promoting from within. That particular issue will have to wait while we see how our current 'rapid' promotions work out.

In the mean time we need to decide on how/if we address the residential market places. So many providers have 'disappeared' over the past few years that it is some sort of clear signal as to what needs to be looked at. Can so many companies be wrong in taking the money and running or, in some cases, let their financiers/suppliers wind them up? While Exetel is nowhere near the second scenario we are under increasing 'visibility (simply because there are so few 'independent' ISPs left) as a candidate for the first category. Personally, I would never sell Exetel until either health or 'success' has rendered my association with the company unnecessary. However while I have the controlling say in any such decision there are two other very important people/directors/shareholders whose opinions are very important to both me and to Exetel who do not necessarily feel as adamant about Exetel's future as I do. 

I need to fully understand the current, and undoubtedly future, decisions that we will have to make. 

Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2012
ABN 350 979 865 46

PS: Something that continues to prey on my mind is how long  the current illegitimate Labor/Greens/Oakeshott/Wilkie/uncle Tom Cobley and all 'government will continue in terms of increasing hiring in Australia:

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/labors-big-jobkilling-machine-20120115-1q15f.html

It's hard not to despise those cretins.

John Linton

Back in Singapore after the ghastly 2 am take off from Colombo and the three and a half hour flight that gets you in to Changi at 7.50 am feeling like you have just died and been resuscitated. Singapore's usual frightening efficiency saw us walk from our gate to an empty immigration hall and then walk to the carousel which delivered both our bags within two minutes of us reaching the belt. Our courtesy car driver was holding up a sign with our name on it and 11 minutes after exiting the aircraft we were on our way to the hotel....as I said - almost frighteningly efficient.

We finished up the SL review an hour earlier than planned and then had a long lunch with Steve over the Hiltons curry selection mulling over what might have been achieved and what we now have to do to ensure we meet the early 'mile stones'. Steve is staying on to work with the SL general manager and the head of customer support to continue the development of the video training/testing program on which we are going to base our hiring/training and development of the planned 100 new personnel we plan to add this year. It will be a tough ask but we see no other alternative right now.

Overall I think it was a successful trip in terms of company development and I am glad I participated in the sales training in Colombo. This is probably going to be the most important year in Exetel's history (if you don't count managing to survive in each of the past three years major achievements when so many other companies didn't). To make the transition from providing telecommunications services to mainly residential customers to providing services to mainly business customers is a very big change but we are on track to do that before the end of 2012.....of course a lot can happen over the coming twelve months and it would be very foolish to count any chickens prematurely.

I remember when we looked at the Australian market in late 2008 and first made the decision that we needed to move away from being dependent on residential sourced revenue (in the early stages of Telstra's assaults). It was an almost impossible to conceive decision as our residential revenues in those days represented well over 90% of our total revenues and it seemed like a pipe dream fueled by exceptionally virulent weed to think that we could develop the required presence in the business marketplaces that we believed we needed to do in the required time frame. Three years in to this series of programs/projects (and a whole lot of heart aches) we are looking at the start of the final phase.

We are still missing the last, totally vital, piece of the puzzle and of course have a huge amount of consolidation to do in the structures (both physical and personnel) that we have set up over the past 36 months. So I am going to take a brief three day R and R in the Lion City to try and write the blow by blow operating plan for making three years of extreme efforts turn in to a real investment rather than just a poorly thought out giant expenditure.

Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2012
ABN 350 979 865 46

PS: a knowledgeable sysadmin solved my blog problem.

John Linton

I completed Day Three of the SL review and Annette is 75% through the individual personnel reviews - so pretty much on schedule. We have laid the groundwork to make significant changes to the ways we operate in Colombo - partly because it was past time to make such changes and partly to ensure we are in better 'shape' to double our Sri Lankan staff if all of our plans work out. It is a long way from where we started here as it is in Sydney and the developments over the respective time frames are interesting to now observe in hindsight. It has taken a long time to build what Exetel is today (8 years) but here we are putting in place plans to double the size and scope of the company over the coming 18 months. It's a strange scenario.

Strangely residential ADSL sales continue to run well above 200% above this period last year and show no sign of slackening off - if anything they increase slightly day by day.  We have never had a month in our 'history' where sales of any service have more than doubled in any month and I am really interested in what has happened to make this the case in the first two weeks of January. There is no 'geographic' trend that I can see and no 'churn from' trend other than the increase in churns from 'no name' ISPs with churns from Internode only being slightly behind those from TPG and Telstra. Of course, in the grand scheme of things ADSL, these numbers are tiny but they have become significant to us - obviously any 100% plus change in order intakes needs to be understood as we have done nothing to bring it about - if anything the changes we have made over the past month or so should have had a negative impact. (stopping the customer referral schemes, stopping promotional offers). We must try and work out what is happening - sooner rather than later.

Perhaps it's the 'distance' effect of looking over the Indian Ocean from a tropical paradise that is inducing in me a sense of 'well being' that has been absent for a very long time but I feel better about the future than I have since the early months of 2007. It isn't just that so many competitors have disappeared (that tends to worry me more than it does provide any comfort) nor that we seem to have survived Telstra's onslaughts over the past four years and now "win back" more old Exetel customers from Telstra each day than we lose current customers to Telstra. I think it is in large part that all of the 'defensive' actions we have had to take over the past four years have built a far stronger company in terms of both infrastructure deployed and in lowered costs of delivering all of our services. Perhaps it does owe more to few days in the tropics than I realise.

So we will wrap up the remaining aspects of the SL review over the coming hours and then late tonight head back to the airport. We will spend two days in Singapore visiting a bird wetland sanctuary and then head back to Sydney. It has been a 'good' trip this time.

Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2012
ABN 350 979 865 46

PS: I am having problems accessing this blog remotely (currently using the Exetel office LAN) so I may not post for the next few days.

John Linton

Already half way through the current SL trip and still pretty much on schedule - Annette has done almost 50 reviews in the two days by working very long hours and I have done the parts of the review scheduled for the first two days. I also did my first sales training session in a very long time for the thirty five SL based sales personnel. This kicked off a four hour highly integrated 'sales school' that, from all feed back, was highly successful in achieving its objectives courtesy of Clare and Clarissa's excellent organisation and the two first corporate SL sales reps who ran separate Q and A sessions on how their first 4 months of being a corporate sales consultant had gone so well for them and how they made it all happen. It was all tightly focused and very precise in sticking to Exetel's methods.

We spent most of yesterday on engineering issues - how to improve our hiring, how to improve our knowledge dissemination and how to manage the myriad of new processes we now need to
put in place to successfully deliver the range of new services we
will begin to offer from this month onwards. When you sit down and do the planning for this sort of extension and growth of what you are currently doing you realise how far you have come since setting up the SL operation - immediately followed by how far there is to go and how much more difficult reaching even the lowest of the planned goals/targets it will be due to the ever greater dilution of management capabilities it will be necessary to deal with.

The new sales program for Sri Lanka got away to a good start with four sales being made on the 'first day' including the largest sale ($3,300 per month) being made by an SL sales person. All but one of the new sales people who have been with us for more than a month have now made at least on sale and altogether 72 new customers have been added since the first two SL personnel were 'trained' and all four of the SL sales people who have been with us for three months have 'graduated' form their probationary status by making ten sales (the highest numbers are now 18 and 16 set by the first two people to be trained. A remarkable and highly encouraging achievement. I look forward to the future.

I think today is the 'deadline' for ISPs to sign the new NBNCo contract with every indication, as far as I can make out from the Australian media, that the two largest ISPs (Telstra and Optus) as well as many others having no intention of signing it by today's deadline or at any other time because of "fundamental problems" with the contract as it stands:

http://www.smh.com.au/business/primus-seals-nbn-deal-amid-standoff-20120112-1pwnq.html

Exetel executed and returned the contract when the person responsible for that project returned from his annual holidays earlier this week. There is nothing in the contract that we can see that is not already in wholesale contracts from Telstra and Optus (who rigidly follow Telstra in such matters). Obviously Telstra are teed off that another entity is following its lead by writing contract clauses that it has imposed on its wholesale customers from time immemorial. Does Testra's refusal to sign the wholesale agreement affect anything? Well, yes - it means that there will never be an 'NBN2' - if that status were to be continued....Telstra will either give in or the NBNCo will revise its contract - either way makes absolutely no difference to anyone.

What children these 'executives' are.

Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2012
ABN 350 979 865 46

John Linton

......in either business or personal life.

The first full day in Sri Lanka was quite busy but we got through the required trip agenda items without any difficulties. As usual, jet lag then came with a rush and we were back in our room asleep before 8.30 pm local time. Again, as usual, didn't sleep well on the second night as body and mind try to decide which time zone they are in so we were at breakfast well before seven and back at the office shortly thereafter (the entrance to the office being around 30 meters away from the entrance of the hotel).

We will commence the sales training in about an hour and then return to going through how we will change the SL operation to meet the new requirements of our partnership with AAPT and our changes to directing our ADSL activities toward the Australian small business markets.We have already put in place the 'new' method of handling ADSL support calls from a 60 second response that ends up telling the customer what to do to fix their problems to an 8 minute (after a CSR responds) complete fix to whatever was wrong with their connection (unless a carrier has to be involved in the fix). It was a 'dramatic' change of policy but it was a correct decision and as we resolve the various 'wrinkles' will become a major benefit to all categories of end users. However we will need to do quite a few more things before it delivers exactly what we are aiming for.

Putting in place the processes and plans to make such sweeping changes to any support operation was never going to be easy but it was always going to be essential. As we look to 'sign up' somewhere North of 100,000 new small business users over the next two years the type and depth of support that they will require will be totally different to the support required (if not expected) by a residential ADSL user. The major difference, as we see it, is that the small business user will not 'fiddle' with their hardware settings and there will be no calls about "sudden speed drops" or similar user caused issues. A small business user will also be quite prepared to be guided through on line testing to determine where any fault exists and will not argue with the engineer trying to help them - we don't expect small business users to be 'know it alls' who cannot face up to the fact that the problems they are experiencing are caused by their own fiddling and made harder to diagnose because of their reluctance to admit to the fact that they have made changes to things they didn't understand.

So our current iteration of insisting that our CSRs stay on the line until any reported fault is either fully fixed or is referred to a carrier to correct line or DSLAM faults is the first step in preparing to deal with small business customers who just want any problem with their service fixed in the shortest possible time. Our current benchmark is that 85% of all ADSL 'faults' are fixed within 45 minutes of the fault being reported where carrier intervention is not required. We will establish processes and procedures to reduce that time to 20 minutes over the coming three months and, perhaps, offer an 'instant fix' service at some sort of small monthly charge. It will require a great deal of thought and then a lot more planning to achieve such goals.

Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2012
ABN 350 979 865 46

John Linton

....on our fourteenth or so visit since we first came here to explore the possibilities of setting up an operation. The usual 16 hours door to door trip which is quite punishing but relieved by actually immediately falling asleep and not waking up for six hours - a rare luxury. So we arose and greeted the steamy, monsoonal day with enthusiasm and began this very exciting week.

The new office space looks like all partially completed office space and the likelihood of it being completed on schedule by next Monday would be less than 1% in my untutored opinion. However the view from the 35th Floor of the West Tower is breathtaking which will be an ongoing consolation once people are able to work there. Meanwhile I am using the one remaining spare desk in our East tower floorspace to work as we are now fully committed and if the new space is not completed sometime close to schedule we will have to use temporary hot desking which is not something I ever thought we would do.

I read the various articles on fewer than expected ISPs signing up the NBNCo contracts with a degree of contempt at the childishness of the Australian media:

http://www.zdnet.com.au/under-50-of-isps-sign-onto-nbn-contract-339329191.htm

I imagine most ISPs who haven't signed the contract still have the people responsible for doing that still on their annual holidays. Companies such as Telstra and Optus aren't selling NBNCo services at the moment anyway so it is totally immaterial whether or not they have signed up or not at this particular day - they aren't going to 'miss out' on anything for a fair while as there is very little to sell right now and, according to all published reports, there won't be anything to sell for some considerable time....

....and that point seems to escape the children who call themselves "industry commentators".....no-one/company is selling any real amount of NBNCo services because there are none to sell beyond a household here and there and that won't change anytime soon. So, no ISP (from Telstra on down) is "missing out" on anything by not signing up to the current version of the NBNCo contract. Whether any ISPs who have not signed the currently offered contract will do so in the next few days or at some future time that suits their individual needs is something I have zero knowledge about - but what can it possibly matter to anyone? Who is disadvantaged? I can't see how it matters to anyone in any way. It is meaningless non-news.

Just for the record, Exetel will sign the currently offered agreement before the 'dead line' because the person responsible for that area of our business returned to work on the 9th as I am sure at least some equivalent people at other ISPs have done.

Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2012
ABN 350 979 865 46

John Linton

....it's past time to improve every aspect of them.

Business 'life' begins to return to 'normal' today with the return to work of more than half of our 'holiday takers' with the others mostly due back next Monday. So another 'Christmas' has passed with, if you live in Sydney, one of the fiercest and most spectacular thunder/lightening storms I can ever remember turning the harbour in to a pyrotechnical display to rival the New Year's fireworks - but much, much louder. I am one of the most indifferent of people but even I turned off various electrical appliances and pulled the power leads from the sockets because the lightening strikes were so very close and so very frequent. Some sort of portent perhaps?

Annette and I will go to Sri Lanka late this afternoon with a more than usually full agenda and, with the growth in personnel in Colombo, a particularly heavy review work load for Annette. Our principal focus will be on the training programs we need to put in place for the balance of this calendar year and the recruitment programs that will support our, quite, ambitious plans. It will be a very exciting few days with by far the most 'Australians' (5) in Colombo simultaneously. It will be a very busy week for many people getting so many new programs under way and beginning the changes to Exetels directions over the coming two years. We have managed to build quite a large, and immensely complex, company in Colombo over the past four years (which seem to have passed in a 'flash') and it's only now that I am beginning to grasp just how much more complex the next year or so are going to be.

Before we depart today there are a larger than usual number of 'house keeping' tasks to be completed this morning as we begin the re-vamp of our overall data base systems to ensure that we re-kindle the drive to more fully automate everything we do as we begin to do more new things than we have ever done in the past with more suppliers and addressing more markets. We trialled the new fax software that we developed in house on Sunday which managed to send almost 38,000 faxes in less than four hours (our total current prospect data base less numbers listed as do not call on the ACMA data base). Being able to send 10,000 faxes an hour is a gigantic improvement over the 100 or so an hour by the previous third party software. It is also around one tenth of the cost (including the the cost of the DND 'wash' that wasn't previously possible to be done automatically).

This is just the first example of how much more effort we have to put in to redeveloping our automation program - it illustrates just how fat, dumb and happy we have become by still using systems and processes we put in place in the very early days of Exetel and have not bothered to improve since then. If we can make the same progress across all our other processes we have just done with our fax out software then we will be in much better shape than we are today. So, among all the other things we need to do to make 2012 more successful than 2011, and its predecessors, the critical analysis of our internal systems and then redeveloping them remains the key to maximising any future success we may enjoy. It's not very exciting but it is easily the most productive set of tasks we can undertake.

It's going to be a very busy week.

Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2012
ABN 350 979 865 46

John Linton

....and getting up at 5 am to take my youngest son and one of his friends to the airport has allowed us to enjoy as much of it as will be possible. We thought of having breakfast on the way back from the airport but nothing was open which surprised me as we live in a suburb that has a large number of coffee places - apparently 6.15 am is too early for Sunday trade.....

.....but not too early for some people to send me irate emails complaining they had to wait "an unconscionable time for their support call to be answered" -  at 4.30 am on a Sunday morning - and "what was I going to do about it". So I emailed the complainant back, at around 6 am with, what I thought was a reasoned explanation. Apparently it was neither reasoned nor reasonable because it produced a vitriolic reply which I can't begin to reproduce here - this being a 'family blog site'. My reply to his original complaint was:

"Dear Sir,

I apologise for the 50 minute delay before your call for support was answered earlier this morning. Over the past three months Exetel has changed the focus of providing support for residential users from answering each support call in under sixty seconds and then advising the customer on how to resolve their issues and asking them to call back if they were still having problems to staying on the line while the customer goes through our advice step by step until the problem is resolved.

Our previous process provided the fastest response to a support call possible but the majority of callers had to call back at least once and some times twice before their problem was resolved. The average elapsed time to get a customer experiencing a problem 'back on the air' was something like three or more hours compared to the current process which gets a service (that doesn't require work by the carrier) 'back on the air' in an average of less than 40 minutes (wait time plus fix time).

We believe providing a 'back on the air' support service of less than 40 minutes (for over 80% of callers) is significant improvement over getting a customer 'back on the air' is around three hours. Over the coming months our aim it to progressively reduce the average 'back on the air' time to 20 minutes and to do this for 90% of callers rather than the current 80%.

Once again I am sorry you had to wait longer this morning than our planned time to get your service restored."

I don't know what 'wait times' are experienced in residential ADSL or other services around Australia so I can't comment on what a good or bad fix time is for a fix to customer generated problems that have nothing to do with the supplier's service but almost always are caused by customer ineptitude and problems trouble shooting equipment purchased from other entities. We do have a goal of fixing 95% of all customer problems within 20 minutes of 'first ring' by June 30th this year but I have nothing to base those targets on other than I believe is both possible and reasonable.

My unscientific testing of other residential ADSL suppliers support answer times shows long queue times are the norm (longer than those currently experienced on Exetel's support lines) and I obviously have no idea how competent the CSR who answers the call is. Our interest in moving away from 'provide the customer with advice on how to fix their problem if it is not Exetel related' to 'fix all customer problems irrespective of whether they are Exetel related or not' is a first step in providing a different level of support for small business ADSL users rather than to residential ADSL users.

While this 'fix on first call' approach clearly didn't please the person who wrote to me earlier this morning, and quite possibly a percentage of other customers, we think it is a much better way of providing support to the majority of our customers.

Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2012
ABN 350 979 865 46

PS: 50 more reasons why Democracy is useless (I particularly liked the Indiana entry)

http://www.divinecaroline.com/22323/99603-

John Linton

.....was very positive in all respects.....getting the second week 'right' will largely determine how successful the other 50 weeks will be.

The 'high light' of week one was residential ADSL sales which will finish the first week at over 200% of the first week of 2011 and all other residential services (VoIP, Mobile, Fax, SMS, hosting) all finishing over 150% of orders received at this time last year. We also completed the large amount of 'maintenance/re-organisation' work on our network without incident which was both a great relief and a tribute to the skills and dedication of the network management and engineers responsible for doing it. So we can tick of the first week of the fifty two this year as being very, very successful which is not that common for the first week of January in my commercial experience.

Although I have gone in to the office each 'working day ' of the past week for a few hours I am still taking advantage of the 'holidays' to relax more than is possible at other times of the year though I didn't manage to get to the cricket and didn't even manage to watch more than an hour or so on TV for all sorts of reasons. We will have a busy next week  going to Sri Lanka to participate in the sales and technical training and for Annette to do the quarterly personnel reviews which, with close to 100 SL personnel, have become very demanding. We will also need to take some time to attempt to get some press/media coverage of our partnership with AAPT - not to gain any commercial 'presence' but to help us in recruiting the large numbers (in our terms) personnel we will need over the coming months. We will use any coverage we may achieve to 'persuade' the universities to add us to their prospective employment lists for their better graduates. We will also use it to select up to three recruitment agencies to help us find the right people for these positions.

We also used the 'Christmas period' to recruit additional engineers and trainee sales people for the Australian operation and they will begin to join the Australian teams from next week onwards. It is always exciting to add new people by going through the interview processes to determine whether each of the applicants are likely to be both successful and a positive influence on the people they will work with (and that the people they will work with will be a positive influence on them). We have been very 'lucky' over the years that we have been in business in that we have hired very few/almost no people who have not instantly fitted in and quickly become very productive 'assets'. Part of that comes from the quite careful approaches we take to hiring but mostly it appears to be because of the 'culture' and operating 'atmosphere' within Exetel.

Although we have been very successful in our recruiting over the past eight years we have obviously never had to recruit the large, for us, numbers of people we are planning to do over the coming year. We could leave all of our current recruiting processes in place - they have produced very good results for a very long time - but we will need to make them better and recognise that they will now involve different people managing the overall process than in the past. As the success of any commercial enterprise depends on the quality of the people who operate every aspect of it there can be no more important task within any company than the selection of new people. It is so obvious that it shouldn't need stating. I don't know how we will do this over the coming months but it is something we have to get  very right.

Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2012
ABN 350 979 865 46