John Linton .....for the next month or so.
We have one day to go to complete our revisions to this years business plan for the remaining six months of this financial year in terms of figures and targets and can then put the 'documentation' in place notifying the various people concerned about the changes that will effect them. It has been a different process this time and, from my viewpoint, much more frustrating as it has involved more people who, by definition, haven't had the 'starting point knowledge' to have made any sensible contributions and have slowed the overall processes resulting in a great deal of 'frustration'. We had two major decisions to make in terms of 2012 and have been unable to make either of them - one because we have not managed to get enough information from a third party and the other because we have not been brave enough to fnalise the decision. These are small matters in the general 'sweep' of business but they are very large to us - or more particularly to me personally.
However, we will make the last minor changes to the overall objectives of Exetel in a series of meetings today and then move back to making as much as we can happen in these, dying, days of 2011 and seeing just what we managed to accomplish over the past twelve months which has seen so many changes in the telecommunications industry in Australia and particularly for our part of it. One of the things that I have noticed has changed the most is the attitudes of almost all the main suppliers of residential ADSL and voice telephony services to both the markets and the services that are offered to the different markets. I struggle to find the right words to describe this change - the closest I can get is 'a progressive lessening of interest'. Perhaps Telstra's relentless 'win back campaigns' and therefore the reactions of every other ADSL supplier to the residential market campaigns reduced profitability from ADSL so much that even the wealthiest of providers ended up not caring as much as they had in the past.
Possibly more surprising than the changes in attitude, from the suppliers view point, has been the virtual abandonment of many suppliers in their pursuit of major profits from wire line telephone call charge profits.....not Telstra of course (though that also lessened over the year) but the offers of first VoIP and now massive reductions in PSTN charges ($10.00 a month retail for 'unlimited' local, national and calls to Optus mobiles from Optus is a stand out change of emphasis) - I guess that just indicates that VoIP has finally become the de facto cost standard for telephone calls and these newish PSTN prices are the belated reaction to the ongoing loss of telephone call revenue by the carriers (Telstra). Mind you the profits on wire line calls are still gigantic - at least for the carriers:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/fees-ruling-puts-a-smile-on-telstras-dial-20111208-1olau.html
Another noticeable change over the past year or so has been the abandonment of 'naked' ADSL by all but the very silly elements of the marketing/buying sections of the industry. A few years ago 'naked' ADSL (always a particularly stupid appellation) became trendy as really dumb people thought that they were somehow "not paying money to Telstra for a worthless PSTN line" by buying a 'naked' ADSL service. Of course, all they were doing was spending more money to cripple the necessary PSTN line that delivers the ADSL service and make it more difficult to change suppliers. They saved nothing but the suppliers were happy to do it because it made it harder for the customer to 'churn away' from them. One of the crazier marketing nonsenses I have ever seen - but then the buyer decisions made in the ADSL marketplaces are as crazy as those in any other set of marketplaces I suppose.
So, we will have the Exetel Christmas party this evening which marks the 'formal' end to another year with only the final 'tallying up' to be done over the coming days - it's almost 2012.
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