John Linton We are still trying, and failing, to find a sensible way of offering mobile data services to a wider demographic. Our current offerings are only good enough in the market place's 'eyes' to maintain overall numbers of customers where they have been for the past eighteen months while other providers rapidly grow there customer bases, taking advantage of the rapidly growing demand for wireless services. Price/cost comparisons seem to show that the prices we offer for the download inclusions are as good or often better than the main competitors and the quality/speeds obtained on our 'premium/layer 2' service are superior to all other Optus resellers or Optus itself. It is a conundrum. It also surprises me that the take up of the premium services continues to out strip the standard services.
I very much doubt that I will be able to come up with something that will turn this situation around over the next three days (having failed to make it happen over the past three years) but it is deeply frustrating to fail so badly for so long and after putting in so much effort....and investing so much money. I have been contacting some of the customers who have canceled their Exetel mobile data service to see if I can find a pattern over the past few weeks - I haven't found anything at all and it would be reasonable to say that what I have found is even more frustrating. Of 46 people with whom I have been able to make contact:
18 said they had no further need for the service as they were using the data allowance from their mobile phone plan
11 said they swapped to Telstra because of better coverage/faster speeds
8 said they switched to another Optus reseller as Exetel's coverage was unusable
6 said they switched to Vodafone for a much better deal
3 said they had no further use for any wireless service
I realise the sample size is far too small to mean anything sensible (especially the 8 people who switched Optus resellers looking for an improvement in performance) but it probably does point out that Exetel's ability to promote wireless broadband after almost 4 years of trying different things is woeful. Some 2 - 3 months ago I conducted another mini survey by contacting 100 recent new customers as to why they selected an Exetel service. 62 said it was recommended by a work colleague with a further 31 saying it was recommended by a family member or friend...the other 7 said they were Exetel customers and simply bought it from the user facilities. On the plus side, of 48 who had used a mobile data service from another provider 38 said the Exetel/Optus service was noticeably faster with the other 10 saying they hadn't noticed any difference. None said it was slower.
I will, as usual, buy one or other of the short term wireless services while I am in the EU and also look at the general pricing per GB per 'dollar' as well as seeing what speeds are now available in London and Paris as well as the depths of the French and English rural areas and compare those performances as I have done over each of the previous four years. I will also make some attempt as my current mental exhaustion returns to normal via intakes of French cuisine and viticulture and try and work out just what we need to do to improve our wireless broadband performance. I have no high hopes for that happening, but hope springs eternal.
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