Previous news from 2005
January 2005
| 13th January 2005 | Exetel Adds Points Of Interconnection In Adelaide And Perth |
Exetel already provides SHDSL services to Queensland regional and Brisbane customers and Victorian regional and Melbourne customers via high speed network links sourced through Optus.
Exetel will now also provide SHDSL services to South Australian and West Australian regional users and users in Adelaide and Perth via SHDSL from the end of January 2005 via similar high speed links provided by Optus.
| 14th January 2005 | Exetel Financial Results 1/7/04 - 31/12/04 |
In the six month period ending 31st December 2004 Exetel Pty Ltd reported a profit of $250,547.05 on revenues of $4,116,260.01
| 20th January 2005 | Exetel Plans ATM To Ethernet Migration |
Since commencing offering ADSL services in NSW Exetel has connected end users to its NSW Point of Presence using Telstra supplied ATM bearers with multiple AGVCs running over those bearers. This was the only option provided by Telstra until quite recently. Telstra now offers the alternative of using Ethernet connections that can take up to 1,000 mbps of traffic compared to ATM circuits which can only carry a maximum of 128 mbps each.
Exetel has now ordered a 1,000 mbps connection from Telstra's ADSL POIs in the Sydney CBD with an initial capacity of 75 mbps and, once this connection is activated, will connect all new users via this simpler methodology.
Exetel will progressively migrate its current ADSL users away from the ATM connections over the coming 6 - 9 months.
February 2005| 1st February 2005 | Exetel Releases Low Cost Mobile Services |
Exetel today released low cost mobile plans that are available to users anywhere in Australia. The Exetel mobile servces feature no flagfalls and very low call charges billed per second. There are, initially, three plans all of which provide mobile services over the Vodafone nework.
| February 4th 2005 | Exetel To Provide ADSL In Victoria |
Victoria has been selected as the first expansion State for Exetel ADSL which currently has only been available to NSW users. The reasons for this decision were:
1) The growth of Exetel's SHDSL business in Melbourne and the economies that will be achieved by having a Melbourne PoP.
2) The release of the mobile services earlier this week which are available Australia wide and which, together with the Australia wide availability of Exetel's long distance telephone services will allow Exetel to offer competitive ADSL/Mobile/Telephone 'bundles'.
3) The reductions in costs available via Telstra's GigE rather than ATM connections to the ADSL LACs.
4) Victoria's population
5) An analysis of current ADSL offerings in Victoria that indicates that Exetel's offerings will be more than competitive.
Orders for the various services and hardware will be placed today with the objective of activating ADSL in Victoria before the end of March 2005.
| February 11th 2005 | First 'Anniversay' Of Exetel's Communications Services |
At around 2.00 pm on this date in 2004 Exetel received its first ADSL application by the just commissioned on line residential order entry system.
This was by mistake as we hadn't intended to activate the order entry system until the 12th. We actually received four applications before midnight on that day, 22 on the following day and then 37 on the day we had 'announced' we would be accepting applications for the first time.
In the first week we received 117 applications which was almost double what we had anticipated for the whole of February 2004. By the end of February we had received 363 ADSL applications; more than six times what we had expected; we very quickly modified our forecasts for March onwards.
The last 12 months has been very demanding but has been very, very successful in every usual measurable commercial term.
However in looking back at what has been achieved in such a, relatively, short time it is quite amazing. In commercial terms Exetel has built a business, or more correctly several interlinked businesses, in less time than any other company in Australia has ever done in this industry segment.
This has been done that without borrowing any money, paying all suppliers/creditors/taxes on or ahead of time and making a small but real profit in Exetel's first year of operation; something that is rarely achieved by any start up business.
Exetel now have one of the largest ADSL businesses in NSW and one that continues to grow faster than any other ADSL provider's except for BigPond and Optus; Exetel will connect its 13,000th NSW ADSL customer within the next week or so and the new order volume in February, at least at this early time of the month, is running at a new record high rate.
Exetel also have almost 3,500 wire line long distance customers and are now adding new wire line customers at a faster rate than any time in the past four months.
Exetel's SHDSL business continues to grow on plan each month and Exetel have now activated points of interconnect in WA, SA, VIC and QLD and have connected the first SDL customers in those States.
Exetel added a mobile service a few days ago and have connected the first 20 mobile users in the first few days of announcing that new service.
Earlier this week Exetel connected its 500th wireless broadband user.
Over the past 12 months Exetel have automated virtually very aspect of its several businesses and, thanks to their dedication and competencies in a wide array of technological and administrative processes, less than ten people are able to answer the phone within a few rings and deal with the endless questions and problems of approaching 17,000 customers in a totally effective way as well as running every other aspect of a constantly growing business.
It was a remarkable 12 months.
| February 24th 2005 | Change To The Uncounted Download Period |
Following exhaustive discussions with interested customers the following change will be made to the uncounted period.
From 1st March 2005 until further notice the uncounted period will be:
From 2.00.01 am
To 9.00.00 am
This change is necessary to deal with the issues that have been highlighted by the protracted delays in commissioning the new, temporary, AGVCs and the uncertainty about the exact activation date of the new GigE link to the Telstra LACs and the transfer of the traffic on the temporary AGVCs to the GigE connection.
Since Exetel introduced the free time period on March 1st 2004 there has only been one change in the provision of the uncounted period; that was a reduction from 8 hours to 7 hours in July 2004 for one month.
March 2005| March 21st 2005 | Exetel Connects 15,000th ADSL Customer In NSW |
Exetel connected its 15,000th ADSL customer in NSW a little after 7.00 am this morning. Exetel connected its first ADSL customer in NSW almost exactly 13 months ago.
Exetel connected its 10,000 ADSL customer in NSW a little under 4 months ago
| March 31st 2005 | Exetel To Offer ADSL Australia Wide |
Since it began offering ADSL services in February 2004 Exetel has only offered ADSL services in NSW. From the first month of offering ADSL services Exetel has become a very popular choice by people choosing an ADSL service for the first time and by almost 2,500 people changing from other ADSL providers to Exetel. Exetel has now decided to offer ADSL services nationally over the coming three months.
ADSL will be made available to locations outside NSW on the following, provisional, schedule:
April 28th 2005 - Victoria, Queensland and the ACT
June 14th 2005 - South Australia, West Australia and the NT
July 25th 2005 - Tasmania
April 2005| April 8th 2005 | Exetel Dramatically Reduces Wireless Modem Costs |
Exetel has reduced the cost of the Navini modem needed to connect to the Unwired wireless broadband network from $295.00 to $75.00 for a limited time.
This has been made possible by Unwired releasing a quantity of refurbished Navini modems that are covered by an ‘as new’ warranty.
| April 14th 2005 | Exetel Third Quarter Financial Results |
Exetel made a profit for the three months ending March 31 2005 of $204,723 on revenues of $2,830,000. Exetel now has slightly more than 20,000 wire line telephone, mobile telephone, hosting, data and internet customers.
May 2005| May 2nd 2005 | First non-NSW ADSL Users Connected |
Exetel completed the activation of its Australia wide network connections on time at the end of April.
As of today users from all mainland States and Territories are now connected to the Exetel residential and small business ADSL services.
| May 17th 2005 | 18,000 ADSL Users Now Connected |
Exetel connected its 18,000 user to its DSL network today less than two months after connecting its 15,000th ADSL user.
The first 150 customers from States and Territories other than NSW are included in this figure for the first time.
Applications from users outside NSW now account for almost 15% of total DSL applications.
| May 31st 2005 | Record Month For New ADSL Applications |
On May 31st Exetel received the 2,000th new ADSL application in a month for the first time.
This was made possible by the provision of ADSL in all other mainland States and Territories which contributed almost 400 new applications in May.
June 2005| June 17th 2005 | Exetel Makes VoIP Available |
Exetel has activated the on line order forms for its VoIP service today. Exetel conducted a 9 month investigation in to VoIP solutions and ‘live tested’ several short listed solutions before deciding it would offer VoIP using its established relationship with a major international carrier. Users will be able to use Exetel’s VoIP service from their ADSL service and link to any destination in Australia or internationally via toll quality lines to and from the Exetel Sydney CBD switching centre.
| June 30th 2005 | Exetel Grows Strongly In FY2005 |
For the twelve month period ending 30th June 2005 Exetel revenues increased to a little over $10,000,000 compared to a little over $1,000,000 achieved in the previous twelve month period.
Exetel now has a little over 25,000 customers for its suite of communications services with the majority of those customers, over 19,000, using its broadband internet services. This compares to a little over 4,000 customers twelve months ago.
In achieving an almost ten times growth in revenue and a six times growth in customers in the last twelve months Exetel's personnel increased from six people to fifteen people.
Exetel has always been, and remains, the most efficient and therefore the lowest cost operator providing internet and other communications services in Australia. It is this efficiency that allows Exetel to offer lower prices to the end user than any other provider to the Australian market.
July 2005| July 20th 2005 | Exetel Passes 21,000 DSL Connections |
Exetel now provides DSL services to a little over 21,000 business, government and residential users around Australia.
| July 25th 2005 | Exetel And VoIP |
Exetel has connected over 100 customers to its new VoIP service over the past month. Exetel’s directors and an increasing number of employees are also using the VoIP service at their homes.
Exetel is in the first stages of implementing VoIP as its main business voice communications technology replacing its current conventional PABX and ISDN telephone lines with a server based PBX function and DSL connections for both inbound and outbound calls. This process will be phased in over the next three months but, apart from the direct cost savings, will allow Exetel to provide “million dollar PABX” services to its customers.
These additional services will include a wide range of constantly updated messages on all aspects of the services Exetel provides (with separate numbers to allow up to 5,000 simultaneous calls) as well as providing the ability for Exetel customers who have Exetel VoIP services to call Exetel at no cost.
August 2005| August 7th 2005 | 1,000 ADSL Customers Outside NSW Now Connected |
The 1,000th ADSL customer outside NSW connected to the Exetel ADSL service this morning; Exetel connected the first customer outside NSW a little over 3 months ago on May 2nd 2005.
Almost 50% of these customers are in Victoria with a little over 20% in Queensland.
Exetel has almost 21,000 ADSL customers in NSW.
| August 10th 2005 | Exetel Connects 1,000th Wireless Broadband Customer |
The 1,000th wireless broadband customer was connected earlier this week; Exetel connected its first wireless broadband customer in late August 2004.
Exetel uses the Unwired wireless broadband network to connect users to and from the Internet.
Currently Unwired wireless broadband is only available in the Sydney metropolitan area.
| August 13th 2005 | Sydney Morning Herald Again Rates Exetel As "Best Buy" |
The Sydney Morning Herald's ICON section has again rated Exetel's ADSL plans as "Best Buys" for 'low' and 'medium' internet users. The article also rates Exetel's wireless broadband offering as a 'Best Buy' for wireless services.
The Sydney Morning Herald also rated Exetel's ADSL plans the "Best Buys" in its similar article in July 2004.
The article can be found here: http://www.smh.com.au/news/icon/hatch-a-plan/2005/08/10/1123353369591.html
| August 19th 2005 | Exetel Adds Additional Redundancy To Its Internet Services |
Exetel has today signed an agreement with MCI to add an additional 200 mbps of internet connectivity to its internet gateway. To date Exetel has provided internet egress/ingress using bandwidth provided by Optus and Powertel. An initial 100 mbps of bandwidth will be added within the next 60 days with the remaining 100 mbps added as required over the coming months.
Exetel will continue to add bandwidth to the Optus (currently 340 mbps) and Powertel (currently 120 mbps) connections and the additional bandwidth from MCI is to provide further path diversity and further redundancy.
Exetel already uses MCI as the sole provider of wholesale voice minutes for its long distance and VoIP telephone services.
September 2005| September 12th 2005 | Exetel Connects 25,000 Broadband users |
Exetel now has over 25,000 broadband users connected to its DSL services. Exetel continues to connect around 2,000 new DSL users to its services each month with connections in the past month exceeding 2,500 new connections for the first time.
Of those currently connected 25,000 users, over 4,000 have transferred to Exetel from another ADSL ISP (in the same period less than 300 Exetel ADSL users have transferred away from Exetel to another ADSL ISP)
| September 17th 2005 | The Challenges Ahead |
A great deal has happened since Exetel was 'created' in January 2004.
We now have:
- over 30,000 users of our different services.
- 17 permanent employees and four associates.
- a Sydney PoP with over 500 mbps of ingress/egress bandwidth and over 600 mbps of connectivity bandwidth; both in the process of being upgraded by a further 100 mbps.
- revenue of over $1,500,000 a month and commercially acceptable profits made each month.
- a business plan that is based on, and is tracking exactly towards, 50,000 customers by June 30th 2006 and an annual revenue of well over $20,000,000 for the financial year ending on that date.
We face a number of significant challenges over the next nine months; many directly within our abilities to deal with, but a few, that are beyond our control - such as the new policies of the new management at Telstra and what they may mean to a small communications provider like Exetel.
As you may know we have put in considerable investments and efforts in to building a range of products and services around our core business of providing ADSL services via wholesaling ADSL tail circuits from Telstra.
Our current additional businesses:
SHDSL
Wireless Broadband
Long Distance Telephony
Mobile Telephony
VoIP Telephony
Communications Hardware
are all growing from their initial start ups and all but VoIP (the newest of our businesses) deliver net profit to our overall operations - in the case of Long Distance Telephony a very considerable percentage of our monthly net profit comes from those services.
Apart from the myriad day to day "challenges" we will face over the next 9 months our major endeavours, and concerns, will be directed towards the following:
1) Protecting Exetel's Business From "Adverse" Telstra Management Decisions
As you would know we, very early in our 'history', set out to develop a relationship with Optus and, to a lesser extent with Vodafone and Powertel. This was done in the expectation that, irrespective of what Telstra might publicly state, they truly resent having to have a wholesale business and will continue to do anything to make wholesale customers uncompetitive in the marketplaces in which they operate (all of them that we operate in).
The appointment of the new CEO makes any 'fears' we may have had in the past much worse as he is an 'on the record' person saying he sees no future for a wholesale business within Telstra. While the end results of any changes that might be put in place from these expressed views will be some time in the future beyond the next nine months it is important that Exetel plan to have a future that is not dependent, in any way, on buying services from Telstra - except as an option to buying services from other providers.
Our expectation is that Telstra will progressively make life more difficult for us (irrespective of what they may do for other wholesale customers) and therefore it is our objective not to buy any services from Telstra (except as a second supplier) by December 31st 2006.
To accomplish this we will work at continuing to build our business volumes with other suppliers and continue to look for alternatives to Telstra's ADSL2/2+ DSL solutions as they become available.
At the moment we buy ADSL circuits from Optus for non-NSW customers, wireless broadband from Unwired and mobile services from Vodafone. We also buy IP from Powertel and long distance and VoIP minutes from MCI.
If we had to stop buying from Telstra tomorrow - we could do it.
If we had to compete with an even more aggressive Telstra Retail tomorrow - we couldn't do it.
Our aim is to be able to compete with an even more aggressive Telstra Retail by the end of 2006 and we have defined plans in place to do that.
2) Building Exetel's Telephony And SHDSL Business
Currently over 70% of our revenue comes from ADSL services of which 80% of that ADSL revenue is from residential users.
Our aim over the coming nine months is to build the telephony parts of our business, particularly VoIP, to around 30% of our total business from the current less than 10% it is today.
We took over the additional floor space on 1st August 2005 (almost doubling the size of our offices) and equipped it with workstations that were VoIP only. As you may know it is our intention to phase out the current conventional PABX and ISDN lines and replace those services with VoIP by December of this year.
In conjunction with our current SHDSL business we intend to market VoIP services to small and small/medium businesses to both balance our revenues and to balance our bandwidth usage across the hours of the day (as an aside we already achieve a 24 hour bandwidth usage that has never been obtained by any other ISP while delivering uncongested access for all customers at all times).
We have steadily built our relationship with MCI based on buying switchless wholesale minutes and we have recently started buying switched minutes to deliver our VoIP services. We will continue to determine whether there are other carriers with whom we can work to provide a better service and our aim is to have a fully optimised and completely functional PABX replacement service in place by February 1st 2006.
3) Building Exetel's Wireless Broadband Business
Currently we have around 1,300 wireless broadband users compared to over 23,000 ADSL users. However we continue to see increasing, month on month, growth in our wireless broadband business although it's, currently, only available in Sydney.
Unwired have announced that they have the intention, and now the money, to roll out the Unwired network in to all of the other capital cities and to other areas of Australia over the coming twelve months. They will introduce WiMax within that period and both these developments mean that the market for wireless broadband will more than quadruple from the current coverage and the "product set" will appeal to a wider range of end users.
We are making slow, but steady, progress in building our mobile customer base using the Vodafone network. We are also in the early stages of exploring DSL via GSM (mobile) with Vodafone and it is certain that Optus will also combat The Telstra DSL over CDMA in the not too distant future.
We are planning to grow the revenues we receive from "wireless broadband" (in whatever form that might take) from less than 5% of our total revenue in August 2005 to around 20% of our revenue in December 2006.
This is obviously only intended as a very brief summary of Exetel's intentions in terms of the services it offers.
Many things continue to change in all aspects of our business virtually every day.
One thing that won't change is Exetel's commitment to offering ADSL/broadband services that are as good as those offered by any other provider in Australia at lower prices - in whatever form they can be offered in the future.
Currently, and throughout our brief corporate life to date, we have done very well.
Despite the many, many challenges facing us now and over the coming 15 months we believe we have the plans in place to continue to do as well in the future as we have done in the past
October 2005| October 3rd 2005 | Over 1,000 Victorian ADSL Users Now Connected To Exetel |
Exetel now has over 1,000 Victorian ADSL users with the 1,000th user connected at 3.10 pm today.Exetel now has well over 25,000 broadband users around Australia
| October 20th 2005 | Over 6,000 Telephone Users Now Connected To Exetel |
Exetel connected the 6,000th user to its telephone services today. Exetel provides wire line, mobile and VoIP telephone services throughout Australia and connected its first telephone user in May 2004.
November 2005| November 1st 2005 | Exetel’s Progress In The Month Of October |
October was a very good month for Exetel with very strong order intakes and activations in all parts of the business.
We had the second largest month for ADSL orders with 2,659 new/churn applications being received – in spite of the long weekend at the start of the month. This was only 106 less than August’s record which was significantly boosted by the articles in the SMH and The Age that month. New/churn ADSL orders for the first four months of this financial year are 10,045 compared to 7,153 in the same period last year.
We also passed the 6,000 mark for telephone services in October. This business will be increasingly important to us over the coming months as Telstra repositions its retail ADSL and telephone services to gain more of the market.
We have also made steady progress in the take up of our VoIP service
We had a record number of new SHDSL orders in October and the applications for ancillary web hosting, email hosting and DNS hosting services were also very strong.
Similarly, new wireless broadband applications remained at near record levels and we passed 1,400 connected wireless customers in late October with a record backlog waiting connection which would have taken us past 1,500; this is only a little over two months after we passed 1,000 connected customers for the first time.
| November 9th 2005 | Exetel’s Connects 1,500th Wireless Broadband Customer |
Yesterday the 1,500th, concurrent, user connected to the Exetel/Unwired wireless network.
This is slightly less than three months after the 1,000th wireless customer connected which took around 12 months to happen. Wireless broadband is becoming increasing popular and is likely to become more popular following the recent Telstra wire line rental price increases.
Currently wireless broadband via Exetel is only available within most parts of the Sydney Metropolitan area but Unwired have publicly stated their intention of rolling out their wireless coverage to other capital cities and some regional areas in 2006
| November 21st 2005 | 20th Exetel Employee Commences |
Exetel is a relatively new company that began offering communications services to residential and small business users in February 2004 and connected its first ADSL user in late February 2004. Over the succeeding 21 months Exetel has progressively broadened its communications offerings to include most aspects of data and telephone services and has rapidly increased the number of customers to whom it provides services to over 36,000 today.
Throughout the past 22 months Exetel has maintained levels of efficiency, in every aspect of its operations, that has continued to allow the provision of communications services at costs to users that are lower than those offered by any other provider in the Australian marketplace while maintaining an ability to deliver consistent highest levels of service quality and reliability and to answer customer support telephone calls and emails quicker than any competitor. One of those efficiencies is the ratio of employees to customers that at 1:1,800 is the most efficient in the Australian communications industry.
Today the 20th member of the small Exetel team commenced work with Exetel. Over the time that we have been in business we have employed a total of 22 other people in full time positions (including the founding directors) and 19 of those 22 people remain with Exetel. today.
December 2005| December 16th 2005 | Exetel's Progress In 2005 |
2005 has been a very interesting and extremely successful year for Exetel. It is the second year of our operation and over the past 12 months we have completed all of the work required to establish Exetel as a company that can provide a full range of data and telephone communications services.
While, obviously not having detailed information about the achievements of any of the companies with whom we compete, I think we can fairly safely say that we have outperformed either almost all or all of companies with whom we compete over the past twelve months.
In simple financial terms our business has tripled over the past twelve months from revenues of a little over $5,000,000 in calendar 2004 to revenues of well over $15,000,000 in calendar 2005.
Similarly our user base has grown from around 14,000 customers as at 31st December 2004 to well over 38,000 customers today.
The growth of our ADSL, SHDSL, Wireless Broadband, wire line telephone and modem businesses each grew very strongly throughout 2005 - with revenues and numbers of customers both more than doubling.
Early in 2005 we added mobile telephone services to our service offerings and in October we added VoIP telephony. Both of those services have begun to grow strongly as we refined the offerings and as positive word of mouth about the new services began to spread.
In operational terms today's Exetel looks very different to the Exetel of December 2004. We now have 21 full time personnel compared to 10 at the end of 2004. Our office space was almost doubled in July 2005 office which was made much simpler than growing pains usually inflict by a very fortuitous vacancy occurring next door which made the change virtually painless.
Our network capabilities have also grown significantly over the past twelve months with the addition of four new high end Cisco routers and more than 15 additional servers and, of course very large increases in both ingress/egress and connectivity bandwidth. The bandwidth deployed by Exetel is now approaching 700 mbps split over four major providers in terms of connection to and from the internet and over 800 mbps of connectivity between our customers and our network switching centre split over three major providers.
Throughout the past twelve months we have done everything possible to build ever stronger relationships with the suppliers and providers with whom we started up the Exetel business and without whose assistance we would not have been able to grow Exetel to the size it is today so quickly.
We have continued to only source and supply Netcomm modems to those 600 - 800 of our customers each month who wished to buy their hardware through Exetel. We have continued to buy more ingress/egress bandwidth for our two 'start up' providers, Powertel and Optus from whom we also buy SHDSL tail circuits. We now also buy ADSL tail circuits from Optus, primarily for our customers outside NSW and continue to look at additional Optus services for 2006.
In February 2005 we began a relationship with Telstra Wholesale to source ADSL tail circuits and we now spend close to $1,000,000 a month with Telstra Wholesale.
We have used MCI's network for our wire line service since we first offered a telephony product and in the second half of 2005 we added Internet bandwidth and VoIP connectivity to the services we buy from them.
Overall Exetel's supplier policy has been, and will remain, to select supplier and provider partners with whom we can build and maintain very strong, and mutually supportive, relationships so that we can, jointly, deal with the inevitable issues that arise in any relationship based on a long association of give and take and mutual support and goodwill.
The last twelve months presented many 'challenges' which, thanks to the calibre and dedication of the people working for Exetel, were met and dealt with quickly and effectively and in totality.
Doubtless 2006 will bring a similar number and variety of challenges some of which have been signaled and for which Exetel has been preparing and doubtless some which will present themselves with no warning and which we will have to deal with if/when they occur with the same or greater levels of resourcefulness we have been able to muster to date.
We would like to thank each one of our customers for their confidence in giving their business to an 'unknown small provider' and our supplier partners who had the 'faith' to provide services to us when we were a completely unknown entity.
Thank you each for your contribution; it is you who have made Exetel whatever it is today
For news from 2004 please Click here
For news from 2006 please Click here
For news from 2007 please Click here
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