So rumours are flying that Vodafone may want to buy RIM.
So lets see, the carrier who has managed to comprehensively screw themselves and the Australian consumer is going to ‘buddy up’ with RIM who displayed breathtaking arrogance and gave away a market they created and delivered below standard, half finished products.
Excellent!
The only winners out of this one are going to be the RIM shareholders who may actually be able to get a reasonable price, assuming the rumours are true, and they haven’t been started by some Wall Street analyst desperate to dump his ‘dog’ stocks before bonus time at a price inflated by a stupid rumour.
Nahhhh. That’d never happen.
Showing posts with label vodafone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vodafone. Show all posts
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Vodafone's Australian 4G Network?
Last night I was talking to a friend who was telling me about a frustrating conversation he had with Vodafone’s telephone “we want to book an appointment for a sales rep” team.
They rang up and told him that Vodafone had completed their rollout of their 850MHz network and now there was no difference between their network and Telstra’s.
Sadly for the ill trained headset jockey on the other end of the line, he keeps up to date with this stuff. So he explained to her that Vodafone hadn’t completed the rollout of their network and it wasn’t due for completion until late 2011 or early 2012 according to Vodafone’s own announcements.
After she argued with him about this for a while she finally acknowledged that this was the case and she was aware of this fact.
Now he told her that since Telstra was commencing the rollout of their 4G LTE network in late August that it would make sense to wait and see what network performance would be before making a decision about looking at carriers. His business is a big consumer of mobile data and demand for higher speeds with reliability is growing.
Without waiting to take a breath the Vodafone operator came back and said “Telstra doesn’t have a 4G network and will not be launching one before the end of August.”
Obviously Vodafone spends a lot of time training their staff and keeping them up to date with the reality of their competitors network offerings.
She was so adamant that she queried with her supervisor who was as ignorant as she was.
In the end he had to give them a couple of links to articles about Telstra’s 4G LTE rollout so they could look them up on the Internet for themselves.
The headset jockey cleared the call and he thought that was the end of that…oh no…
A few minutes later the same person called back to say that Vodafone had the same product and had it in the Australian market for months. “Its called a Femto”, she said.
He was astounded. So was I. I’m certain that if Vodafone had rolled out a 4G LTE network before Telstra the whole country would have known about it.
She also told him that Vodafone had rolled out a 4G network months earlier - only after a lot of questions did she finally admit it was in Germany. Like that’s really going to help an Australian company.
Turns out this thing they had in Australia was not 4G it was a Femtocell which she claimed “tripled your speed by grabbing more signal because of its multiple radios, but its the same thing”.
In the end he hung up, sick of hearing half-truths and marketing spin as a way of getting a sales rep in the door.
If this is how Vodafone plan on getting their lost 375,000 subscribers back they may as well shut the doors and turn off the lights now.
This company is looking more and more like One-Tel everyday.
They rang up and told him that Vodafone had completed their rollout of their 850MHz network and now there was no difference between their network and Telstra’s.
Sadly for the ill trained headset jockey on the other end of the line, he keeps up to date with this stuff. So he explained to her that Vodafone hadn’t completed the rollout of their network and it wasn’t due for completion until late 2011 or early 2012 according to Vodafone’s own announcements.
After she argued with him about this for a while she finally acknowledged that this was the case and she was aware of this fact.
Now he told her that since Telstra was commencing the rollout of their 4G LTE network in late August that it would make sense to wait and see what network performance would be before making a decision about looking at carriers. His business is a big consumer of mobile data and demand for higher speeds with reliability is growing.
Without waiting to take a breath the Vodafone operator came back and said “Telstra doesn’t have a 4G network and will not be launching one before the end of August.”
Obviously Vodafone spends a lot of time training their staff and keeping them up to date with the reality of their competitors network offerings.
She was so adamant that she queried with her supervisor who was as ignorant as she was.
In the end he had to give them a couple of links to articles about Telstra’s 4G LTE rollout so they could look them up on the Internet for themselves.
The headset jockey cleared the call and he thought that was the end of that…oh no…
A few minutes later the same person called back to say that Vodafone had the same product and had it in the Australian market for months. “Its called a Femto”, she said.
He was astounded. So was I. I’m certain that if Vodafone had rolled out a 4G LTE network before Telstra the whole country would have known about it.
She also told him that Vodafone had rolled out a 4G network months earlier - only after a lot of questions did she finally admit it was in Germany. Like that’s really going to help an Australian company.
Turns out this thing they had in Australia was not 4G it was a Femtocell which she claimed “tripled your speed by grabbing more signal because of its multiple radios, but its the same thing”.
In the end he hung up, sick of hearing half-truths and marketing spin as a way of getting a sales rep in the door.
If this is how Vodafone plan on getting their lost 375,000 subscribers back they may as well shut the doors and turn off the lights now.
This company is looking more and more like One-Tel everyday.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Vodafail. Let my people go!
According to this piece from the Sydney Morning Herald Vodafone has themselves a big problem.
Vodafone exodus: 375k customers leave this year
Their numbers look pretty ugly for the second half of last year they booked nearly $18 million in profit. This year they’re showing a loss for the same period of just over $78 million.
That performance is nearly as good as the reception on their network.
Losing 375,000 customers in 6 months averages out to be around 203 customers a day. Where are they going?
According to this article from The Australian it looks like all of them and a whole lot of others are going to Telstra. The quality of their network is the key here and I think the differentiator is the backhaul capability of the Telstra network allowing it to better cope with data consuming smartphones and tablets.
Its been my experience that Optus and Vodafone really invested in voice carriage and projected growth in voice carriage and were caught ‘wrong-footed’ when these types of devices exploded onto the market.
That being said Telstra did their level best to screw every user of mobile data by charging, what seemed like, more per MByte than the current spot rate for gold.
This is where market segmentation really came into play. Vodafone was pitching for the low end of the market, but, these customers were also more likely to upgrade handsets to the latest gadget and roll over their contracts early.
When the iPhone hit, no one expected the explosion in the growth of mobile data consumption and when the rest of the smartphones really hit the market the wheels fell off.
Will Vodafone manage to get their act together and stop the arterial haemorrhage of paying customers? I really don’t know but if this doesn’t get fixed really quickly they could be in a lot of trouble given their capital commitments for network expansion. In fact we’ve been here once before, they were called One-Tel.
Vodafone exodus: 375k customers leave this year
Their numbers look pretty ugly for the second half of last year they booked nearly $18 million in profit. This year they’re showing a loss for the same period of just over $78 million.
That performance is nearly as good as the reception on their network.
Losing 375,000 customers in 6 months averages out to be around 203 customers a day. Where are they going?
According to this article from The Australian it looks like all of them and a whole lot of others are going to Telstra. The quality of their network is the key here and I think the differentiator is the backhaul capability of the Telstra network allowing it to better cope with data consuming smartphones and tablets.
Its been my experience that Optus and Vodafone really invested in voice carriage and projected growth in voice carriage and were caught ‘wrong-footed’ when these types of devices exploded onto the market.
That being said Telstra did their level best to screw every user of mobile data by charging, what seemed like, more per MByte than the current spot rate for gold.
This is where market segmentation really came into play. Vodafone was pitching for the low end of the market, but, these customers were also more likely to upgrade handsets to the latest gadget and roll over their contracts early.
When the iPhone hit, no one expected the explosion in the growth of mobile data consumption and when the rest of the smartphones really hit the market the wheels fell off.
Will Vodafone manage to get their act together and stop the arterial haemorrhage of paying customers? I really don’t know but if this doesn’t get fixed really quickly they could be in a lot of trouble given their capital commitments for network expansion. In fact we’ve been here once before, they were called One-Tel.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Where have all the good sales guys gone?
You know years ago I used to rue the cold calls I'd get from sales guys "out there" trying to sell me stuff, stitch me up for the latest boondoggle or otherwise trying to get their figurative foot in the door.
I know that cold calls are just a part of doing business but it used to piss me off no end.
Oh how I wish the good old days would come back.
Over the last four weeks I have been called at least once a day by third rate telcos telling me that they're going to save me 50% on my current rates while I strain to hear them make the pitch over a third rate VoIP system that's been installed by a fifth rate technician using gaffer tape and baling wire.
The amazing part is that these calls are all coming from Vodafone, so maybe its not a third rate VoIP system, maybe its the kind of quality you get from their prime grade mobile network?
The thing about this is that the caller isn't trying to sell me the product, they're trying to sell me the salesman. The call usually goes like this once they've given me the savings pitch; "One of our sales staff will be in your area next week. They'd like 10 minutes of your time to show you our offering. What time can I book you in for?"
Here's the thing. If they're such a good sales person why aren't they making their own cold calls? If they're not such a good sales person and you can't trust them to make their own cold calls why are you sending them to me?
With this sort of approach I'm being told that we aren't an individual customer, I'm a name on a mailing list and just part of the great sales chocolate wheel, round and round and round she goes where she stops nobody knows but when it does stop on your number we'll call you.
How can any organisation that tries to pitch customer service as a key differentiator take this approach...oh...sorry...we're talking about Vodafone...strike the customer service comment.
The caller usually doesn't know a thing about the company, our needs, requirements and so on so how can they offer us anything other than a standard pitch that will promise the world until you read the fine print that, translated from legalese, means "doesn't matter what we tell you because what you need might make this offer worthless and non-binding".
Here's a tip for all the companies that use this type of bottom feeding sales approach:
Either let your sales staff make their own calls, or, if you can't trust them to hit their numbers get new sales staff who can build a relationship with your potential customer.
Call centres making ten minute appointments for a "consultant" who will explain the latest greatest deal is no way to build a relationship with anyone, and here's the trick, no relationship equals no sale.
And one last note to Vodafone. If you can't tune your CRM system to make sure I don't get 5 calls a week from 5 different call centre operators then I can't trust your technology with something as critical as my phones.
I know that cold calls are just a part of doing business but it used to piss me off no end.
Oh how I wish the good old days would come back.
Over the last four weeks I have been called at least once a day by third rate telcos telling me that they're going to save me 50% on my current rates while I strain to hear them make the pitch over a third rate VoIP system that's been installed by a fifth rate technician using gaffer tape and baling wire.
The amazing part is that these calls are all coming from Vodafone, so maybe its not a third rate VoIP system, maybe its the kind of quality you get from their prime grade mobile network?
The thing about this is that the caller isn't trying to sell me the product, they're trying to sell me the salesman. The call usually goes like this once they've given me the savings pitch; "One of our sales staff will be in your area next week. They'd like 10 minutes of your time to show you our offering. What time can I book you in for?"
Here's the thing. If they're such a good sales person why aren't they making their own cold calls? If they're not such a good sales person and you can't trust them to make their own cold calls why are you sending them to me?
With this sort of approach I'm being told that we aren't an individual customer, I'm a name on a mailing list and just part of the great sales chocolate wheel, round and round and round she goes where she stops nobody knows but when it does stop on your number we'll call you.
How can any organisation that tries to pitch customer service as a key differentiator take this approach...oh...sorry...we're talking about Vodafone...strike the customer service comment.
The caller usually doesn't know a thing about the company, our needs, requirements and so on so how can they offer us anything other than a standard pitch that will promise the world until you read the fine print that, translated from legalese, means "doesn't matter what we tell you because what you need might make this offer worthless and non-binding".
Here's a tip for all the companies that use this type of bottom feeding sales approach:
Either let your sales staff make their own calls, or, if you can't trust them to hit their numbers get new sales staff who can build a relationship with your potential customer.
Call centres making ten minute appointments for a "consultant" who will explain the latest greatest deal is no way to build a relationship with anyone, and here's the trick, no relationship equals no sale.
And one last note to Vodafone. If you can't tune your CRM system to make sure I don't get 5 calls a week from 5 different call centre operators then I can't trust your technology with something as critical as my phones.
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