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News from 2008

January 2008

January 1st 2008 A Very Eventful 12 Months

The last 12 months have been very eventful with many challenges/difficulties overcome and many opportunities taken to improve every aspect of the way Exetel operates. A succinct summary of the major events over the past 12 months is set out below:

Engineering

  1. We added a Queensland PoP.
  2. We added a Victorian PoP.
  3. We began the build out of a second Sydney PoP.
  4. We added a second GigE for Telstra ADSL1 user in NSW.
  5. We pioneered the use of P2P filtering with Allot.
  6. We pioneered the use of P2P caching with PeerApp.
  7. We doubled our customer connectivity bandwidth.
  8. We doubled the number of routers we deployed.

Services

  1. We provided 'equipmentless VoIP' for those users who didn't want to buy VoIP equipment.
  2. We added spam/virus filtering using the IronPort solution.
  3. We added SMS via email.
  4. We added FAX via email.
  5. We began to offer calling card services via retail outlets in 5 capital cities.
  6. We increased the 'free time period' to 12 hours each day.
  7. We increased the 'free time allowance' to 48 GB each month.
  8. We added 'naked' ADSL2 with 100 free VoIP calls to begin the move away from dependence on Telstra.

Financial

  1. We increased our revenue for each of the twelve months continuing the record of doing that for 46 consecutive months
  2. We saw the first signs of Exetel making better than 'break even' monthly profits
  3. Exetel now makes a profit on recurrent revenue without the need of a contribution from 'once only' sales contributions
  4. Our revenue per employee increased by 16%
  5. Our customers to employee ratio increased by 15%
  6. We continued to fund all new asset and other purchases from retained profits
  7. Exetel continues to have no debt and no leasing obligations other than office premises in North Sydney
  8. All growth was achieved with no expenditure on advertising or marketing

Changes occurred in every month and the rate of change over the past 12 months is planned to slightly increase in 2008.

January 18th 2008 Exetel Fully Implements Caching To Deliver Faster P2P Downloads

Exetel has completed a three month implementation program designed to speed the delivery of file transfers and has now completed the first phase of this program by providing a P2P caching service that utilizes 8 terabytes of disk caching to deliver P2P data files at speeds pf up to 400% faster than was possible using an optimized ‘direct’ service.

Once the final ‘tweaks’ are made to this new service it’s expected to add around an additional 400 mbps of ‘virtual’ bandwidth that is available to Exetel customers who use P2P services to obtain data from the internet. Exetel will then proceed to Phase 2 of this program by adding caching for streaming video from popular services such as You Tube and MySpace.

February 2008

February 1st 2008 Exetel Records 48th Successive Record Monthly Revenue

Exetel issued its first recurrent revenue customer invoices on March 1st 2004 for a total of a little less than $10,000. Each successive month since then the amount of the monthly recurrent bill runs have increased. On February 1st 2008 the monthly recurrent bill run was a little over $2,800,000 representing a 28,000% increase in simple mathematical terms. While revenue growth is not a particularly significant measure of commercial success, particularly in expanding marketplaces (such as the ones in which Exetel operates) it is still a notable achievement for a start up company.

Another aspect of the level of success and efficiencies that Exetel has achieved over the past four years since it began operations is that the monthly revenue, which now exceeds $3,000,000 each month is derived, managed and supported by a total personnel of only 30 people making Exetel, almost certainly, the most efficient communications company In Australia.

February 15th 2008 Exetel Activates Akamai Server Cluster

Exetel has been involved in an 18 month program to increase speeds achieved by its ADSL and wireless broadband customers by ‘moving’ the sources of files they download ‘closer’ to the end user.

One of the best ways of improving end user’s file download speeds is to cache the files they need at Exetel rather than needing to go to the USA or even somewhere else in Australia to source the downloads. The best known commercial provider of such services is Akamai: http://www.akamai.com/

who are the ‘preferred’ provider for many major software downloads such as those from Microsoft, Sun Micro Systems and Adobe (as well as many others).

Akamai has now installed a server cluster in the Exetel PoP which will allow Exetel broadband residential and business customers to achieve the maximum speeds their service can run at when downloading large files for new operating system or other software package releases, updates and patches.

March 2008

March 19th 2008 Exetel Signs Lease For Offices In Colombo, Sri Lanka

Exetel is in the process of setting up a company in Sri Lanka which is planned to begin operations in July 2008. Exetel started to employ customer support engineers in Colombo in February 2006 and there are currently four Colombo based Exetel support engineers who work from their homes supporting Exetel customers in Australia using DSL connections to Exetel’s Sydney data bases and being directly connected to Exetel’s Sydney office PABX.

Once the office is established Exetel will provide increased levels of customer support and will increase customer support hours from the current business days 8.30 am to 5.30 pm to seven days a week with week day support (including public holidays) lengthening to 8.00 am to 11.00 pm. Exetel will also move some of its back end accounting processes to Colombo once the support functions are fully operational.

Exetel will also take advantage of the excellent level of programming skills developed in Sri Lankan universities to more rapidly develop both its own in house systems and also a management personnel and operational control suite it plans to take to market in early 2009.

March 24th 2008 Exetel Signs Leases For PoPs In Perth And Adelaide

Exetel plans to extend it’s direct coverage of its ADSL1 customer base by activating its own PoPs in WA and SA and has signed contracts with NexGen for co-location and back haul connectivity to its already established PoPs in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Prior to activating the new PoPs Exetel used Optus to provide connectivity in those States (as it previously did in Victoria and Queensland).

The new PoPs will have local connection to peering centres in those cities as well as international and national connection via Exetel’s two Sydney PoPs. Once these two PoPs are fully operational Exetel will establish a PoP in Hobart and the ACT on the same basis – to provide ADSL1 services to current and prospective customers and to reduce the current costs of providing both residential and business services in those areas.

April 2008

April 9th 2008 10,000 User Help Forum Members

Exetel set up a User help Forum on 3rd January 2004 with the objective of providing technical and other assistance to new Exetel customers as well as to help ‘older’ Exetel customers with problems they encountered in the use of their Exetel services. The advice provided was initially by Exetel personnel (all of whom still provide advice and comment today) but, as with all forums, other forum users quickly became a key part of providing in depth knowledge on the myriad of issues that an ADSL user faces in their daily use of a broadband service.

Over time Exetel’s customers have been well served by many, many experienced users who make time to provide helpful suggestions and advice to people experiencing problems with every conceivable aspect of an internet connection and the wide range of hardware used by Exetel customers. We have been even more fortunate in having customers who, on a volunteer basis, give up some of their ‘spare’ time to administer the operation of the forum and to, themselves, provide the benefit of their knowledge and experience to less experienced users.

Today the number of ‘real’ members reached 10,000 – Exetel runs a comprehensive ‘editing’ program that removes spam bots and other unwanted ‘members’ that attempt to register. Since its creation there have been over 250,000 different threads with over 4,000,000 separate posts made and the Exetel User Forum has been a key resource for Exetel users to obtain advice and guidance to make using their Exetel ADSL and other services more productive.

April 26th 2008 Exetel Adds “Shaping” Options To All Current Broadband Plans

Exetel has always offered broadband plans with large data allowances in both peak and off peak periods. If a customer exceeded either time period’s allowance in any month Exetel charged Australia’s lowest excess download charge of $3.00 per gigabyte for excess downloads.

From May 1st 2008 any Exetel customer on any broadband plan can select the option, for either period, to either continue at the full plan speed if they exceed either the peak or off peak allowance of their plan or to have their line speed in the period slowed to 64 kbps. The customer has the ability to ‘select and forget’ their preferred scenario or they can change the method in as many months as they choose to do so.

This new option creates the most flexible plans available from any ISP in Australia while maintaining the highest down load allowances and the lowest prices.

May 2008

May 13th 2008 Exetel Extends Telephone Support Hours

Since it began operations in January 2004, Exetel has provided telephone support from 8.30 am to 5.30 pm on weekdays excluding public holidays. From June 1st 2008 Exetel will extend the telephone support hours to 9.30 pm each day.

This additional support will be provided as the first benefit to Exetel’s Australia customers of Exetel’s newly established operations in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Over the next six months, as additional personnel are hired and trained, Exetel Communications Pvt Ltd in Colombo will continue to extend telephone support hours for Exetel’s Australian customers to provide telephone support on Australian public holidays and on week ends.

May 22nd 2008 Exetel Completes Australia Wide Network

Exetel signed contracts today to complete its network coverage of Australia by installing PoPs in Hobart and Canberra. These two new PoPs will interconnect with Exetel’s PoPs in all other States and the NT providing Exetel with the ability to deliver services using its own leased fibre to all of its Australian users. The new PoPs are particularly important in allowing Exetel to continue to enhance its VoIP services and will also make it possible for Exetel to provide high speed SHDSL and Ethernet services to business and government organisations in those locations.

The new Tasmanian and ACT PoPs are planned to be activated before the end of July 2008.

June 2008

June 18th 2008 Exetel Signs Contract To Provide Data Over Mobile Services

Exetel has extended its contractual arrangements with Optus to allow the provision of data over mobile services to Exetel customers via the Australia wide Optus mobile GSM network. Exetel has been looking for a viable data over mobile service for almost two years and is now happy that its arrangements with Optus will allow it to provide high speed broadband services to well over 90% of Australia’s population at very affordable prices.

Exetel expects to be able to start providing mobile data services well before the end of 2008 assuming that the current plans for completing the work required to provision, service issue fix and supply sims and USB connectors is completed on the currently agreed schedules.

Looking in to the future Exetel expects that approximately 50% of Australian broadband users will use broadband services delivered via HSDPA services within the next three years

June 26th 2008 Exetel Breaks All Financial Records

With a less than a week to go to the end of the 07/08 Financial year Exetel has exceeded all of its planned targets and broken all previous financial 'records'.

June 2008 is Exetel's 51st consecutive record month since it issued its first invoices in March 2004

June Quarter 2008 is Exetel's 18th successive record quarter

Six Months ending June 30th 2008 is Exetel's 10th successive record half year

June 30th 2008 is Exetel's 5th successive record year

July 2008

July 11th 2008 Exetel Delivers In Excess Of 3 gbps Of Data To Customers For First Time

Exetel ‘s network started in February 2004 with the very modest capacity of 20 megabits per second of bandwidth. Since that time, as the Exetel customer base has grown, Exetel has upgraded the network on an average of twice each month every month. The rapid growth in the number of customers selecting Exetel as their ISP continued throughout the past 4 years with the network growing to a capacity of 1,000 megabits per second in March 2007 and then 2,000 megabits per second in January 2008.

Last night Exetel’s customers downloaded at a new record level of slightly in excess of 3,000 megabits per second – a growth of 15,000% over the original bandwidth.

July 21st 2008 Exetel Acitivate’s PoP In ACT

Exetel has extended its Australian network by activating a PoP in the ACT to connect ACT and Queanbeyan residential, business and Government ADSL1, ADSL. SHDSL and large scale Ethernet users. Over the past 12 months Exetel has expanded network capacity under its direct control by adding PoPs in WA, SA, NT, Vic and Qld and plans to add a Tasmanian PoP as soon as the BassLink connectivity between Tasmania and Victoria becomes available.

August 2008

August 18th 2008 Exetel Begins Customer Testing Of Broad Band Over Mobile

Exetel has almost completed programming all of the ‘back end’ data base and control systems required to be able to deliver broadband services via Optus mobile network and has taken delivery of the first HuaWei ‘keys/sticks that are required to cost/effectively connect an end user to Exetel’s network services via Optus 3G mobile network.

Apart from the testing from various parts of Australia (city and regional) being done by Exetel personnel the first test units were shipped today to Exetel customers in all Australian States and the ACT to carry out a test program of both speeds and reliability. A key part of this testing is to test various VoIP implementations (both those provided by Exetel’s switches and those provided by other companies) both from PCs and laptops and from mobile handsets.

This testing phase is expected to be completed by the end of September with the service being generally released on October 1st 2008 – currently well ahead of the initial planned release date.

August 25th 2008 Exetel (Sri Lanka) Now Fully Operational

Exetel has now transferred over 50% of its support telephone call answering and email responding capabilities to its newly established company in Colombo. Exetel now has 9 full time staff in its Colombo office and has another four about to start training. Over the next four to six months Exetel will complete the initial hiring process agreed with the Sri Lankan Board Of Investment and will have 18 personnel in Colombo by February 1st 2009.

By that time Exetel expects to be handing all support, sales, administration and provisioning calls for over 100,000 Australian customers in its Colombo offices.

September 2008

September 15th 2008 Exetel Releases First Data Over Mobile Broadband Plans

Exetel has successfully completed testing the systems and processes required to provide Exetel customers with a range of data, VoIP and mobile services over the Optus 3G network and has received the first customer orders for these services.

Before releasing the Mobile Broadband services (which will be done in three stages over the coming 6 weeks) Exetel did extensive testing via its own employees and some 30 Exetel customers and other interested parties to determine the true capabilities of the HSPA service at this stage of its ongoing roll out. These tests showed that users in most metropolitan areas could expect sustained speeds between 500 and 1500 kbps and that VoIP, either via a mobile handset or from a PC/Laptop was a very viable service.

Exetel has, at the time of this release, confined the offerings to plans it believes will be very financially and operationally appealing to dial up internet users and low end ADSL users as well as, of course, people who want to use the internet while traveling.

Exetel expects the vast majority of the remaining estimated 2 million dial up users to transfer to an Mobile Broadband type service over the coming 18 months.

September 29th 2008 Exetel Has 18th Successive Record Quarter

Since Exetel “opened for business” in January 2004 it has maintained a steady growth rate from $0.00 as a ‘green fields’ start up to a company with revenues exceeding $A3,700,00 a month in the current month. September 2008 will be the 55th consecutive record month for Exetel and the 3 month period ending 30th September 2008 will be our 18th successive record quarter both in terms of revenues earned and new customers acquired.

Exetel has ten broad business offerings and nine of the ten recorded record customer growth in the quarter and three of the newer service offerings (VoIP, FAX via email and SMS via Email) all grew between 150% and 200% in the quarter. Both Exetel’s main revenue contributors (ADSL1 and ADSL2) also grew very strongly despite indications that the overall growth of these services in Australia had slowed overall over the past 3 – 6 months.

October 2008

October 20th 2008 Exetel Completes Move Of All Residential Technical And Sales Support To Sri Lanka

From 21st October all residential technical support and resolution and all residential telephone and email enquiries are now handled by Exetel Communications (PVT) Ltd in Colombo. Exetel opened its Colombo company in early July 2008 having spent the previous two years developing the training and supervision capabilities needed to operate comprehensive support facilities to Australian Exetel customers from another country.

Exetel purpose built new office facilities in the major Colombo CBD office complex to eventually handle all aspects of Exetel’s provisioning, support, service issue resolution, accounting and programming services for the Australian company. There are now twelve Exetel employees in Colombo working two shifts to provide support and sales support to Australian customers from 8.30 am to 10.30 pm each week day (including public holidays) and from 1.30 pm to 10.30 pm on weekends.

Exetel will gradually increase the number of full time employees in Sri Lanka over the coming 15 months and additional services will be provided to business users from the second quarter in 2009 when support hours will be extended to 24 x 7 x 365.

October 29th 2008 Exetel Included In 2008 BRW Fast 100

Exetel made the BRW's list of the 100 fastest growing (private or public) companies in the financial year ending June 30th 2008. To appear in the list a business needed to have achieved an average annual turnover growth in the three years to June 30th 2008 of 44.43% with a staff of less than 200 people. Exetel ranked 83rd in the BRW Fast 100 list (published in the October 30th 2008 edition of BRW) with an average annual growth over the past three financial years of 50% per year. Revenues used were ex GST.

As with the inclusion in the Deloittes Fastest 50 list last year we are pleased with the 'recognition' such listings give to Exetel and the boost it gives to both our corporate and residential sign ups. To average a 50% “organic growth” in a very competitive set of marketplaces against a range of aggressive, and much larger, competitors is an indication that the products and services offered by Exetel are finding an increasing number, and market share, of Australian customers.

November 2008

November 14th 2008 500th Exetel/Mobile Broadband User Goes Live

In the first two months of making the service available almost 600 customers have signed up to use the Exetel/Optus Mobile Broadband service with the 500th customer activating their service today. Of the first 500 ‘live’ users there is almost an even split between customers using HSPA as an internet service from their desk top or lap top computer and users who are using their mobile handsets to access data from their mobile telephone.

Over 300 of the first 500 users have given feed back to Exetel on their experiences and, with two exceptions, the experiences are very positive with most people reporting that they are achieving much higher speeds than expected (around an average of 1 .5 mbps compared to an expectation of 500 kbps to 750 kbps) and virtually every person who has used HSPA for VOIP (either directly from their mobile hand set or from equipment attached to their computer) has reported that it is indistinguishable from a standard mobile call.

Of the first 600 customers who have ordered the Mobile Broadband/Optus HSPA service over 80% are new customers to Exetel.

November 25th 2008 Exetel Revenue Exceeds $A4 Million A Month For The First Time

Exetel’s monthly revenues have increased every month since the company issued its first invoices in February 2004. In November 2008 Exetel will have received revenues of over $A4,000,000 in a single month for the first time setting a new record and achieving the 57th consecutive month of month on month revenue increases.

Despite the effects of the current uncertain financial conditions and the very uncertain economic outlook for most, if not all, sectors of the Australian communications marketplace Exetel will complete the first five months of this financial year slightly ahead of its original order intake and financial revenue and profit targets.

We have amended the business plan for the second half of this financial year to aim for far more modest growth and much lower take ups of new services than in our original FY2009 plan but are confident that our unbroken run of month on month revenue growth will continue up to June 30th 2009.

December 2008

December 2nd 2008 Best Of The Best Award Finalist – Money Magazine – December 2008 Issue

In the December 2008/January 2009 issue of Money Magazine Exetel’s Naked ADSL2 plan was one of three finalists as the best value for money in the “Cheapest – High Speed” broadband category. Since Exetel’s inception the company has continually been recognized in the Australian press for the ability to offer the lowest costs/highest included download ADSL services.

This recognition began in the SMH awards in July 2004 (six months after Exetel activated its first ADSL1 service, and has continued on a regular basis ever since with a further nine awards between the first one and this most recent recognition.

While the recognition itself has little relevance to current Exetel customers it is an ongoing endorsement by third parties that Exetel has been able to, consistently over five years, deliver the lowest cost broadband services to Australian users that have the highest value for money.

December 23rd 2008 Exetel Achieves Record Half Year Results

Although December still has more than a week to run, Exetel has achieved record results for a six month period as it nears the end of its first five years in business.

Revenue for the half year will exceed $A21 million for the first time due to record growth in customers in 7 of its 10 service types. ADSL2, VOIP and Business SHDSL sales have all been particularly strong throughout the six month period and, despite the current financial uncertainties, December is the best December on record.

Although Exetel’s raison d’etre for being in business is to provide the lowest possible prices to end users (while delivering speed and quality equivalent or better than higher priced competitors) profit for the half year ending 31/12/08 already exceeds that made in the whole of the previous financial year ending 30/6/08 by some 40%.

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