John Linton .........undoubtedly the toughest year since Exetel has been in business and one I will personally be very happy to see the back of.
It must be Christmas because breakfast this morning was the first cut of the Christmas ham on toast and there were only two overnight emails to answer. It has yet to get out of Autumn weather mode with the morning starting quite cold and although the temperature is only now just warming up in this part of Sydney there are an increasing number of very dark clouds that have just 'extinguished 'the sun. Annette assures me that all the Christmas shopping is done and all that remains is for her to spend some eight hours in the kitchen this afternoon and from the crack of dawn tomorrow to prepare the food to feed the dwindling number of family attendees at Christmas lunch while the rest of make half-hearted offers of help which we are glad to see refused..
While the 'business year' has been truly burdensome in the worst possible ways it has also been the most successful year of Exetel's short existence with record revenues, fantastic growth in our business services and the highest level of investments in our network infrastructure by more than double of any previous year. We also now have 150 employees, 30% more office space than we started the year with and a new partnership on which to build our very ambitious ongoing developments in the coming year. So, perhaps, 2011 should be regarded as a necessary evil in a transition to a more interesting, and hopefully more pleasant, future - although it is hard to forget just how truly horrible it has been.
The horribleness of 2011 has been underlined by the late in the year sell offs of Transact and now Internode to the omnivorous iinet which illustrate just how difficult it is for many people to see a positive future in the Australian telecommunications industry for the people who are still in it (a number less than 10% of the total of 6 - 7 years ago). This is not a bad thing of itself as, when you look at the scenario rationally neither Transact nor Internode nor the hundreds of other companies that have disappeared over the past five plus years actually provided very much to their customers that wasn't already being provided by some other supplier....which, no matter how you wish it wasn't the case, is the actual fact of the matter. The current 'NBN2' adventurism (blamed by Internode for their decision to quit - although that obviously wasn't the case) starkly illustrates how even billions of dollars invested with no possible hope of a return cannot actually deliver anything of any value to Australian society generally and also cannot even change the time frames for any value to be delivered by any other means.
Since the Internode sale I have been asked when Exetel will be sold off by a number of sensible people. These people observe that there appears to be no place for companies of Exetel's size in "today's" telecommunications marketplaces and cite Internode as an "excellent company" that couldn't survive in the coming 'new telecommunications world'. Of course they may well be right and based on the past three years of personal stress and immense strain it is not difficult to see their viewpoints. But the companies that have given up whatever ambitions and reasons they may have had for being in the Australian telecommunications business clearly saw no reason to continue to be in this very difficult and very unrewarding business - they took the money that became available from their long and hard years of efforts and went off to do something else. A sensible personal view and one which no-one would see any problem with.
If I had any ambitions relating to money then now would be a good time to look for a buyer for our small company. But I don't. I also have no ambitions for 'Australian market domination' that, apparently, are at least part of the rationale for some people; those with no understanding of commercial or any other history. We had a modest ambition when we started Exetel which we probably never got close to achieving but, in any event, Telstra rendered largely if not completely redundant some three years ago. However on the way to not achieving that ambition we did build the necessary infrastructures to allow us to aspire to another, quite possibly much more important contribution to Australian society (as well as fulfilling our own personal modest aspirations as individuals and as a company). So, perhaps unusually, in 2011 - Exetel's reasons for remaining in business are still as brightly self evident as they always have been and allow all of us to have a sensible reason for going to work each day other than to make our shareholders wealthier.
So, until my personal lifestyle finally breaks the robust health that an accident of birth endowed me with I have a very good reason to continue to contribute to the ongoing well being of my adopted country which has been so kind to me - I also cannot imagine (perhaps I lack imagination) a more interesting way of spending my waking hours......it's a long time since I felt the need to have any sort of hobby.
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