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News from 2007

January 2007

Over 2,000 Exetel customers are now using the new ADSL1 speed of 8192/384 less than 5 weeks after this plan speed was made available. New users to the Exetel service account for 0ver 500 of these users with over 1,500 Exetel users on lower speed plans electing to move to the new speeds.

The take up of the new speed, together with a further 1,000 new and current Exetel users electing to use the new lower priced 1500 plans has seen a significant shift in the Exetel customer speed demographics.

For almost the whole of the first three years of Exetel’s existence the most popular plan speed was 512/128; the plans at this speed consistently, for 35 consecutive months, accounted for over 60% of all plans selected by Exetel users. In December the percentage of new users selecting a plan with 512/128 speeds fell to less than 30% of all new users with 1500/256 and 8192/384 plans accounting for 60% of all new and churn ADSL1 applications.

Exetel’s revenue for the period July 1st 2006 to December 31st 2006 has exceeded $13,500,000; a 60% increase over the previous financial year when revenue was a little over $8,300,000 in the six month period ending December 31st 2005.

Exetel now has a little over 55,000 customers of its data communications, telecommunications and hosting services compared to a little over 38,000 customers as at December 31st 2005.

Profitability for the period increased by 75% over the same period in 2005.

February 2007

Exetel employed its 29th and 30th full time employee today who will join the rapidly growing telephone service provisioning/support team.

Exetel has also signed for 30% more floor space to expand its North Sydney offices to provide facilities for the planned growth over the 2007 calendar year. The additional space will conform to Exetel’s past policy of no offices for ‘managers’ and no reception, secretarial or personal assistant personnel.

Both January and February have seen record numbers of new applications for ADSL1, ADSL2 and telephone services and the new space will be used to accommodate the planned personnel growth over the remainder of this calendar year.

In February 2006 Exetel advertised in Columbo, Sri Lanka for help desk personnel to assist in the support of non- time critical issues being experienced by Exetel customers. After short listing the applicants we brought the two successful candidates to Sydney for a month of familiarization and training on Exetel’s systems and processes. Over the past twelve months the two selected engineers have gradually increased their knowledge and abilities to deal with a variety of technical and administrative issues under remote supervision by the Sydney based Support Manager.

Communications during that time have been by email, messaging and telephone. When Exetel installed its VoIP telephone PABX in September 2006 it was always planned to provide direct extensions to Sri Lanka and this has now been done allowing the Sri Lankan engineers to operate as if they were in Sydney in terms of receiving and making calls to all other Exetel office personnel; this has now been tested and made operational.

Following a review conducted in Columbo this week by Exetel’s Support Manager (in consultation with Exetel’s directors) it has been decided that this feasibility study has been a success and Exetel will continue with its plans to provide expanded support hours via personnel located in countries in different time zones.

For news from 2004 please Click here

For news from 2005 please Click here

For news from 2006 please Click here

For current News Click here

March 2007

Exetel’s revenues for February 2007 were in excess of $2,600,000. This result was the 36th consecutive month (since Exetel entered the communications provider business) that revenues have exceeded the record set in the previous month.

It was also the first month since Exetel commenced in business that revenue from the provision of ADSL1 services dropped to below 50% of total revenues – something that had been planned from the beginning of Exetel’s offer of services to end residential and business users.

Exetel connected its 5,000 customer to its ADSL2 services today. Exetel uses the Optus ADSL2 network to provide ADSL2 to users who also wish to ‘bundle’ the rental of their telephone line with Exetel and uses the Powertel ADSL2 network to provide ADSL2 to users who wish to use their current telephone line provider.

April 2007

Exetel introduced three new plans today that don’t require the customer to be ‘locked in’ to a minimum number of months of use of the services. While it is becoming common for other ISPs to require a customer to ‘lock into’ periods of 12, 18 or even 24 months, Exetel is, again, leading the ADSL market by progressively reducing contract ‘lock in’ periods.

Initially there are three new plans that have no contract period; one each at 256/64, 512/128 and 1500/256. The plan’s prices are also very low starting at $27.00 for the 256/64 plan.

All of these new plans include 1 gb of downloads between 12 noon and 12 midday with downloads in the 12 midnight to 12 noon period being free.

If a customer exceeds the 1 gb allowance in the 12 noon to 12 midnight period additional downloads are charged at an extremely low $3.00 per gigabyte (or part thereof).

Exetel believes that these plans will have particular appeal to customers who live in rental or short term accommodation (including visitors to Australia) who want ADSL but don’t want it for a long period of time at a particular address.

The work done over the six months ending 31st March 2007, based on Exetel user suggestions on how to improve all aspects of Exetel’s support to it’s new and established customers has achieved the aimed for results in that:

1) The time taken to restore a service that has failed has reduced by an average of 40% to 15 hours.

2) The wait time for a customer calling support has reduced to below an average of 60 seconds for the 20th consecutive day:

Average number of daily calls handled: 149
Average waiting time: 00:42
Average wait time before a call is abandoned: 1:00
Daily abandoned calls: 12
Average talk time: 4:38

3) The response time to logged support tickets has been reduced to less than one hour at 9.00 am, 1.00 pm and 6.00 pm for each of the past 20 days:

Unassigned tickets unattended for 1 hour or more: 0

Assigned tickets unattended for 1 hour or more: 21

The work on further reducing resolution times is continuing.

May 2007

Exetel executed the remaining contracts today to establish PoPs in Victoria and Queensland. From January 2004 until today all ADSL customers have been services out of Exetel’s Sydney CBD PoP. We began offering SHDSL services to inter-State customers in mid 2005 via relatively inexpensive back hauls from both Powertel and Optus so that we could meet the needs of Sydney based customers who wanted VPN connections in other States. In March 2005 we signed a contract with Optus to buy their re-sold Telstra ADSL1 services using their inter-State backhauls and activated the first inter-State ADSL1 customers in April 2005. We did this as, at that time, it was more economical to pay a premium to Optus rather than invest in the equipment and operational costs of establishing our own PoPs for what would be only a handful of users.

Since the first inter-State ADSL1 users connected to Exetel there has been a steadily increasing month on month growth in each State and Territory. This growth has followed the relative population sizes of the different States and Territories with Victoria and Queensland having much larger numbers of users than the other States and Territories.

It’s now 2 years since the first Victorian and Queensland ADSL1 customers connected to Exetel and the customer base size in both those States make it economical for Exetel to invest the money in both Melbourne and Brisbane to provide the same facilities that are provided to Exetel users in NSW – this is mainly direct access to PIPE peering and a slightly shorter path to local servers. The cost of doing this will be offset over time by the lower cost of buying the ‘tail circuits’ directly from Telstra Wholesale and the elimination of the SHDSL back hauls. This will not be of any financial advantage to Exetel for a minimum of 12 months but we believe that this investment is important to the future plans we have for the company.

We will be co-locating with Verizon in Melbourne and with Powertel in Brisbane with the planned ‘go live’ dates of 14th June in both locations.

Exetel has been providing mobile telephone services (via the Vodafone network) since February 2005 and over the succeeding 27 months the number of users of Exetel mobile telephone services has continued to grow each month. As the number of users have grown Exetel has been able to obtain better pricing from the carrier for many call types and these cost savings have been passed on to the end user every time we have obtained lower rates.

Current business volumes have allowed Exetel to offer calls from Exetel mobile users to other Exetel mobile users at no charge for the first two minutes. This benefit will apply to all current Exetel mobile users irrespective of the current plan they are on.

The free Exetel to Exetel mobile call benefit will come in to effect from June 1st 2007.

June 2007

Since it first offered ADSL services (in February 2004) Exetel has only provisioned those services through a switching centre based in the Sydney CBD. As Exetel’s business has grown to offering services in every geographic location around Australia it has been possible to deliver those services via infrastructures leased from its business partners.

The scale and number of users in States (and Territories) other than NSW that has now developed has made it both economically and operationally practical for Exetel to expand its own network by adding a second switching centre in Melbourne which became operational today.

Exetel will now service Victorian and South Australian customers via the Melbourne switching centre.

Exetel’s revenue for the 12 month period ending 30th June 2007 has exceeded $30 million – a 50% increase on the revenue achieved in the 12 month period ending 30th June 2006.

Exetel now has a little over 60,000 customers compared with 47,000 customers on June 30th 2006.

July 2007

Exetel commissioned a Melbourne Point Of Presence in mid June 2007 to provide faster access to Victorian web sites for residential Victorian users in mid June and faster inter-State connectivity for Victorian business customers. Exetel has been connecting all new and transfer customers via the local PoP since that time and will progressively migrate all current Exetel ADSL1 and SHDSL and Ethernet customers to the new facility over the remaining months of 2007.

The Melbourne PoP is connected to the Sydney PoP via a 100 mbps inter-State fibre connection for all overseas traffic and via a PIPE peering connection for Victorian based traffic. Exetel expects to have over 5,000 Victorian residential and business users connected to the Victorian PoP by the end of 2007.

Exetel connected its 7,000th ADSL2 customer today almost exactly one year after the first Exetel ADSL2 customer was connected. Take up of the ADSL2 service (using the Optus network for ADSL2 including a ‘bundled’ telephone line and the Powertel network for ADSL2 with the telephone line rented from another provider) has been gradually increasing month by month as both Optus and Powertel add exchanges to their network.

The majority of Exetel ADSL2 users are in NSW where the majority of Optus and Powertel ADSL2 exchanges are located. The current ADSL2 user base represents around 15% of total ADSL users and is expected to slowly increase to around 20% of total ADSL users by the end of this financial year.

August 2007

Exetel has activated an SMS service that sends SMS via the customer’s DSL service to any Australian mobile telephone and the majority of international mobile telephones. The cost of the service is 7 cents per message with discounts for ‘bulk buys’ of 10,000 and 20,000 message ‘bundles’.

The SMS is sent via a function in the Exetel User Facilities but can also be accessed via an API provided by Exetel. Messages can be sent to single or multiple destinations and the user can create multiple user lists and their own address books of commonly called numbers.

Exetel’s revenue in August 2007 has exceeded $3,000,000 in one month for the first time. While revenue is only one measure of any company’s performance this result has been achieved in the 44th month of Exetel’s existence which has seen revenues increase month on month, every successive month, since the first month Exetel issued an invoice.

September 2007

Exetel commissioned a Brisbane Point of Presence in late August 2007 to provide faster access to Queensland web sites and peering points for residential Queensland users and faster inter-State connectivity for Queensland business customers. Exetel has been connecting all new and transfer customers via the local PoP since that time and will progressively migrate all current Exetel ADSL1 and SHDSL and Ethernet customers to the new facility by the end of February 2008.

The Queensland PoP is connected to the Sydney PoP via a 100 mbps inter-State fibre connection for all overseas traffic and via a PIPE peering connection for Queensland sourced traffic. Exetel expects to have over 4,000 Queensland residential and business users connected to the Queensland PoP by the end of 2007. Queensland ADSL1 users now connect to the Brisbane CBD PoP via the Telstra network and a direct GigE connection to the new PoP.

Exetel customers have sent over 50,000 SMS messages from their computers using the SMS over DSL function introduced by Exetel less than 6 weeks ago. The service has been used by over 5,000 Exetel customers since it was introduced and the number of daily SMS sent increases week by week. The interest being generated by this facility is increasingly from non-Exetel customers who use SMS services. Large clubs and other social groups have begun to use the service as have an increasing number of businesses who use SMS to contact their employees or their customers.

October 2007

Exetel has received delivery of the equipment needed to provide a P2P caching solution to those Exetel customers who use P2P protocols to download large files. The trial will commence in November 2007 and will run for three months. If it’s successful then Exetel will fully deploy a P2P caching solution which will cost around $400,000 over the next 12 months with the objective of making P2P downloads faster for the end user and lower cost for Exetel to deliver.

Exetel has made the decision to invest in this equipment and software after an eighteen month investigative process and in response to the increasing use of P2P protocols by business software and entertainment program developers to distribute their ‘titles’ and then the constant updates to those ‘titles’.

Since it commenced offering communications services in January 2004, all of those services have been delivered from equipment located in Powertel’s Data Centre in the Sydney CBD. Exetel has now begun the process of duplicating the infrastructure needed to provide its major communications services by activating a second PoP is Sydney at Verizon’s Data Centre in Pyrmont. This PoP has now been operational for several months delivering Exetel’s VoIP services via multiple PRI’s provided by Verizon with a GigE cross connect to the main PoP at Powertel.

Exetel will now ‘build out’ the Verizon PoP adding the new SMS via email and FAX via email functions to the Verizon PoP. Over the next 18 months Exetel will move other services to the second location and add connectivity to ensure eventual full duplication/redundancy of all Exetel’s communication services.

November 2007

For the last seven years Deloittes has produced a list of the fastest growing 50 technology companies in the communications, software, life sciences, internet, electronics and computer peripherals sectors of Australian domiciled and owned businesses. The criteria for inclusion are those companies that have recorded the highest percentage of growth in the period Ju1y 2005 to June 30th 2007 and who also:

Develops proprietary technology which contributes to a significant proportion of revenue

Manufactures a technology related product

Devotes a high percentage of revenue to R and D

Been in business for over three years with a growth year on year over the three year period.

Exetel was included in this listing for the year 2007 with a cumulative growth of 159% in that two year period.

Exetel today released a range of ADSL2+ services that allow a customer to use an ADSL service without having to rent a voice telephone line. There are five plans that start at $50 a month for 56 gb of included downloads through to $105.00 a month for 96 gb of included downloads. A prospective customer must have an operating telephone line connected to a Telstra exchange to be able to apply for this service and once the service is connected the customer will no longer be able to make calls using that telephone line and the telephone number will no longer belong to them – and, of course, they will no longer be billed for telephone line rental.

All the “Naked” ADSL2 plans include 100 free local and national calls over an Exetel supplied VoIP service (which includes a Direct Indial Number to replace the standard telephone number) or the customer can elect to use any other VOIP provider to make and receive telephone calls. To take advantage of the free local and national calls the customer must have a VoIP capable modem, router or dedicated VoIP connectivity device to connect their current hand set to the ADSL2 service.

The “naked’ ADSL2+ service is available from a limited number of exchanges but should be available to well over 50% of current ADSL, ADSL2, Cable and Wireless Broadband users.

At an entry price of $50.00 a month (with 56 gb of included download data – uploads aren’t charged) and with no requirement to pay for telephone line rental (typically between $20.00 and $30.00 a month) Exetel believes this new offering delivers the lowest price availability for ADSL with usable amounts of data downloads available in Australia today. If a user is able to take advantage of the free VoIP local and national calls (and the very low cost international calls and calls to mobiles) this service also provides the lowest telephone call costs available anywhere in Australia.

Each ‘naked’ ADSL2+ service also includes the Standard Exetel broadband plan inclusions of 20 email addresses, 200 mb of web space and 20 free SMS (with only a 5 cent charge for additional SMS).

December 2007

Since Exetel activated the SMS via ADSL service on 17th August 2007 a growing number of Exetel customers have used this service on a regular basis. The service has also begun to bring new business ADSL and SHDSL customers to Exetel because they wanted to use the service and then found that Exetel’s other services were of equally good quality and generated similar cost savings.

The number of SMS sent per day using the ADSL to SMS service has steadily risen as more and more Exetel business customers began to use the service to send, often, hundreds and sometimes thousands of SMS in a day. Yesterday the number of SMS sent by our customers from their ADSL services exceeded 20,000 for the first time.

Exetel has completed the activation of a 4 terabyte caching service aimed at quadrupling the speed at which an end user can download a P2P sourced file while at the same time halving the cost to Exetel of providing the file. This is achieved by using equipment and software sourced from a company called PeerApp. It has taken some two months of gradual implementation, with the expected amount of ‘teething problems’ to put this function in to production but this service is expected to be of significant advantage to Exetel users who use P2P applications to source popular files.

This is the second stage of an 18 month to 24 month implementation program to speed the delivery of P2P traffic while reducing the cost of providing that traffic that started a year ago with the introduction of a P2P bandwidth control system from Allot and will culminate in mid 2008 to late 2008 with the full implementation of an Akamai server ‘farm’ and a 12 terabyte mirror service for those files not provided via the Akamai or PeerApp servers.

For news from 2004 please Click here

For news from 2005 please Click here

For news from 2006 please Click here

For news from 2008 please Click here

For current News Click here