Welcome to the third edition of Engaged.  It's been a while since you last heard from us but we wanted to give you all time to recover from your seasonal festivities and Australia Day celebrations and get well and truly over your back-to-work blues.  It's been a fairly hectic few months at Telcoinabox since the last edition.  Among other things we've gone out all guns blazing with our largest product launch ever on Optus mobile, wireless broadband and Blackberry, signed an agreement with a master franchisor for our New Zealand operation, sponsored a yacht in the Sydney to Hobart race and conducted our first ever global business review in London (taking in the GSM expo in Barcelona and the slopes and après ski of St Anton in the process).

While you were tucking into your left-over turkey I hope you were sparing a thought for Damian Kay (our managing director) and Leo Rodriguez (the owner of Voice2net and one of our franchisees) who formed part of the crew of Telcoinabox Merit for the world-famous Rolex Sydney to Hobart yacht race.  If you missed the extensive newspaper articles and television coverage of the heroics that this crew got up to you can catch up on the amazing exploits and tales of derring-do in Damian's first-hand report of what it's really like to sail in one of the toughest offshore ocean races in the world (although from the sound of it the post-race celebrations in Constitution Dock were more of a survival challenge than the race itself).

For those of us back on dry land we were coping with riding the peaks and troughs of a major new product launch.  The response to the new Optus products has been phenomenal and has enabled some excellent growth, in particular the wireless broadband and timeless plans which have sold like proverbial hot cakes.  One of our service providers that has really thrived on the new Optus products is IF Telecom.  In this edition of Engaged we put IF Telecom in the spotlight and find out just what they're doing to achieve their success.
 
As with any launch it hasn't all been plain sailing (pun firmly intended).  There have been a few hiccups along the way and as a result our support teams have been placed under a huge amount of pressure.  I'm glad to say that on the whole they have come through the experience with flying colours although it may take a while for the mental scars to heal.  We're continuing to work on those areas that still need fine-tuning and are preparing for our next major launch (ADSL2+) early in the new financial year. 
 
Across the ditch we've been busy setting up our New Zealand operation with Shannon Fisher (one of our successful Australian franchisees) coming on board as our master franchisor for New Zealand and re-locating to Wellington and Zac Crofts (Stepping Stone Team Leader) about to become our second international transfer from the Australian operation.  Read more about the progress of the New Zealand operation in the article from Laura Jacob who's been closely involved in getting the business off the ground.
 
If you're reading this as one of our franchisees you will recently have received (and hopefully completed) our annual Franchise Relationships Institute (FRI) survey.  This is your opportunity to give us your feedback on all elements of the franchise system.  We take the results extremely seriously and they guide and direct our strategies for continuous improvement of the business.  We'll be sharing this year's results with you all shortly but in this edition we managed to grab a quick chat with Debb Lowe, the Operations Director with the FRI, who gives us her take on what's going on in the world of franchising.
 
So what else has been happening in the industry?  Well the big news back in February was that Hutchison (3) and Vodafone announced a merger that will take the number of mobile carriers in Australia from four  to three and see the '3' brand gradually phased out.  The deal was kept closely under wraps until it was announced and will result in a combined market share for the new entity (Vodafone Hutchison Australia - VHA) of 27%, a close third behind Optus (32%) and Telstra (41%).   So what does this mean for Telcoinabox?  Since neither party is a major wholesale player the ramifications are more likely to be at the retail level.  Mergers of this size are notoriously difficult to manage and it could result in both parties taking their eye off the ball while they focus on it.  If anything it's likely to make the retail market more competitive as VHA seeks to take 2nd spot from Optus but, on a positive note, if Optus responds, as I'm sure it will, then it will result in an even more competitive product offer from them which we are well placed to take advantage of through our wholesale relationship.
 
As I write the latest news is all about Telstra's decision to start charging for national (STD) and international calls in 30 second blocks.  This comes off the back of another set of impressive results for Telstra and the not entirely unexpected announcement of the departure of CEO, Sol Trujillo.  When combined with the tightening of the Australian economy (and the use of the dreaded 'R' word) this news is a great for our service providers who now have an even better opportunity to pick up some disgruntled Telstra retail customers by offering plain and simple good value with no "smoke and mirrors" or hidden catches. 
 
So sit back and enjoy the latest news from us here at Engaged and, as always, please let us know what you think and what topics you'd like to see discussed in future editions.
 

Author: Paul Line
Email: paul@telcoinabox.com