Carlos Computers - Cairns Computer Repairs, Sales and Service

Telecommunications hardware company Alcatel-Lucent has produced a short video explaining the National Broadband Network to the average Australian and dispelling the myth that it's all just about faster internet speeds. Enjoy.

Australians all let us rejoice for we will soon have much better telecommunications prices. The Rudd government has announced today that it has put forward legislation to force the separation of Telstra into retail and wholesale arms, paving the way for much better competition and better pricing for all Australian consumers.

The nations 2nd and 3rd largest telco's, Optus and iiNet have welcomed the move saying it will change the entire competitive landscape in Australia and put all telco's on a level playing field. One of the key recommendations to the building of the National Broadband Network (NBN) was that the functional separation of Telstra would need to be done sooner rather than later in order for the NBN to become a reality.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said that today's announcement of major changes to the Telecommunications Act would force Telstra to separate its infrastructure and retail arms, or face tough new rules on the way it operates. The changes will allow Telstra to voluntarily separate itself, or be "functionally separated" by the Government.

Consumer groups have also welcomed the move saying that all Australian's will benefit from the forced separation and lead to more innovation and lower prices in the industry.

Telstra of course has criticised the move saying they are committed to working with the government. This of course is a load of utter nonsense and the same line the company has been regurgitating for years and still we have inadequate services compared to the rest of the developed world. 

I've often wondered why telecommunications companies are so scared of offering a better deal. I mean the value is there these days with the increased competition but we still get a raw deal when it comes to selecting a provider. All the mobile providers have so many hidden terms and conditions on their services and outrageous fees if you break contracts or go over allowances in your plan it just makes you want scream!

Perhaps the biggest rip off in the mobile industry is the excessive cost of text messaging. All the mobile carriers charge around 20c per text message. What you might not know is that a text message is basically 140 bytes of data. At the current rate it costs around $1.43 per MB to send a text messsage, this equates to over $1400 per GB of data! This is around 175 times more expensive than what current wireless 3G data costs. It's a massive rip off to us as consumers and a considerable windfall to the mobile operators.

The other con with mobile operators is the Early Termination Fees (ETF) they charge to leave them. Imagine if you wanted to change dry cleaners or doctors and they charged you an ETF to go somewhere else. There'd be outrage and surely the appropriate trade practices authorities would step in and say it's illegal. So why do mobile operators get away with it?

So here's my proposal on the perfect mobile operator.

1. A choice of either no contract or 12/24 month contract with a subsidised phone. Put simply, if you go on no contract you pay for the phone upfront, if you go on 12 month contract you pay 1/2 of the phone cost and if you go on 24 month contract you get the phone for nothing upfront.

If you wanted to leave you basically pay out the cost of the phone. No contract ETF, you're free to go at any point.

2. Simplify the plans. Offer only "cap plans" where you pay an upfront cost with included calls, SMS and data. Go over the included value and pay per call, SMS and data at a higher rate. Keep things simple and without any hidden catches and people won't be so annoyed! Also allow the data to be used in any way the customer wants to use it. Don't make customers pay for a second data plan for tethering to their laptop, this is ludicrous.

3. Offer better customer service. Sounds simple but in reality so many providers fall short of offering decent customer service. How many times have you heard someone complaining about having to call India to get a problem resolved? A good example of a company that offers exceptional customer service would be Internode or Westnet. These companies have Australian support with very little wait times. Why can't all companies do this?

The customer service comes back to point 1 also. If you have exceptional customer service you shouldn't have a high customer turnover rate and you don't need to have ETF.

So what are your thoughts, can a company like this ever exist in our current market place or can we keep dreaming?

In case you missed it, a YouTube viral video made the rounds this week with more than 13 million people worldwide viewing it. The JK Wedding Entrance Dance was done by a couple, Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz at their wedding in a small Saint Paul church in Minnesota.

The clip featured the bride and groom's seven bridesmaids, five groomsmen and four ushers dancing to Chris Brown's, Forever.

Nielsen SoundScan, an information system that tracks sales of music and music video products throughout the United States and Canada, says that digital sales of "Forever" jumped from 3,000 to 50,000 a week when the video was posted.

What this highlights is what many of us in the tech industry have known for years. Fair use of copyrighted material actually leads to higher sales. This argument goes all the way back to the Napster days when the recording industry was fighting tooth and nail to have file sharing services shut down as the free distribution of their music was hurting sales. There were many studies and investigations done that revealed a correlation between illegal music downloading and the increase sales of singles. Napster was helping the music industry! 

How can this be so? Well it's very simple. Napster had a unique system in place where if you downloaded a song it would then recommend artists to you from other users that you may like. It was kind of like a "try before you buy" system where you could listen to the alternative artist.

Other examples of stupidity by the music and movie industry are far and wide, such as NBC's decision to pull all Saturday Night Live sketches from YouTube even though its ratings had been the highest they'd been in years. This was contributed to a very funny sketch called "Lazy Sunday" that was viewed by millions on YouTube around the world who then tuned into Saturday Night Live the following week.

I've always had the opinion that media consumers can be classified into three succinct categories:

1. Those who always buy DVD's, albums etc. These people are media lovers and collectors who genuinely love consuming music and video.

2. Those who buy some media and will "pirate" other media. This group of people like to support the music and movie industry, but don't want to spend a fortune in the process.

3. Those who never buy anything and will always "pirate" everything. This group is a lost cause.

What I'm trying to get at is the music and movie industry should not be including the third group in lost sales. Why? Because this group was never going to buy the media in the first place so no actual sale would have been lost. This is nothing new, it's been happening for years.

The music and movie industry needs to target the second group and figure out why it is they are downloading some media while paying for some of it. Well the answer is very simple. It all comes down to a few factors; cost, availability and opportunity. Offer the media at a lower cost and in a variety of formats otherwise you won't get the sale at all, simple.

What do you think? Leave a comment!