Quack

The next generation of coverage, speed, services has brought us the next generation of mobile phone plans. No, the odd characters in the title are not shorthand for me swearing, but rather the mandatory footnote tags that appear in every single (mobile) phone advertisement you will see, referring you to the all important information in the footnotes. The beloved asterisk, dagger, caret, and pound symbol are essential qualifiers these days to what used to be simple words like “plan”, “fee”, “anytime”. Don’t you pine for the days when “anytime” actually meant “any time”?

The early days of mobile phone billing brought us my favourite item in the smoke-and-mirrors toolchest: 30-second billing. (more…)

I’m very excited today, because my monthly Foxtel bill has arrived. Ordinarily, a pay TV bill would not get me excited (not even me!), but this bill is very special to me. You see, when we moved house some two and a half years ago, Foxtel was not readily available, so I cancelled the service and switched to Optus. It’s basically the same thing anyway, especially now that they both have digital.

Since that time, every month Foxtel have sent me a statement showing that my account is in credit for the princely sum of $46.20. For a while I was collecting them, accumulating them on the office noticeboard. The fantastic thing is that (more…)

Little fish, big fish swimming in the water. It’s the end bit of that fantastic PJ Harvey song – “Down by the water”. Google is just amazing: by searching for the exact lyrics, I found a site called www.songmeanings.net where people put forward what they think songs mean. I have no idea what this (or most PJ Harvey songs) means, but she’s got a superb voice, and this song has great rhythm.

Yet again, the talk of significant consolidation among Tier 2 and Tier 3 service providers has come up, and yet again, it will (more…)

One of the facts of life is that most people like to be accommodating. Customer has a small request … so you say “sure, that can be done, it’s just a 5 minute fix”.

How many times have we said this, only to regret it later? And how many times has this desire to accommodate the client ended up causing problems? The last time for me was 8 years ago and, believe me, never again!

Here’s how the nightmare played out…

1. Request comes from (more…)

I recently attended the MVNO Summit in Sydney, where I heard from and lectured to people interested in this important sector of the market. As part of a market analysis session, the question was raised “why don’t PSTN providers also offer mobiles?”

We started off providing billing for fixed-wire services, and this was pretty easy, from both a provisioning, rating and pricing perspective. The service being provided was very simple, and the way it was sold was equally so. Some of our Partners expressed an interest in billing mobiles as well, and we helped them do that.

But mobiles are a whole other story. Firstly, the provisioning systems (more…)

Nobody likes to see their mobile phone bill increase month after month to the point where it becomes a major expense – especially in times of rising interest rates. And unfortunately one of the most common reactions to a big bill is to try and blame someone else.

Lately the finger has been pointed at the mobile phone dealers who gain recurring commissions on bills going to their customers. (See Mobile phone industry should come clean and Mobile users locked in and losing out). This keeps coming up (more…)

Welcome to the site, and thank you for stopping by! You may have received an e-mail from me about this new site, or been forwarded the link by a friend.

I’ve already posted my first blog, and am working on several others with topics that include my observations on the latest issues – such as recurring commissions, industry conferences and industry consolidation rumours.

My vision is that quack.net.au will become a valuable resource for our industry – for carriers, service providers, regulators, billing providers, and other stakeholders. From my experience attending industry functions, we tend to take advantage of every chance to network; this site is a further such opportunity.

This is not just my personal soap-box – I do more than enough of that in the office! In addition to blog feedback and discussion, we will invite contributions from a variety of people within our industry – perhaps even the person at Telstra who devised Sol’s salary package? That’s an interesting bit of billing software …

Like any industry, we don’t take ourselves too seriously, so please enjoy (or groan at) the duck humour. With the approach of the cricket season, the gratuitous word plays will be overflowing, so please keep with the spirit. (In the meantime anyone who is usually out for a duck and wants to practice their skills should have a look at this online cricket game!)

To celebrate the launch of this site, I’m offering a prize of dinner for two* at either The Flying Duck Hotel in Melbourne, or Billy Kwong in Sydney (both well known for their duck dishes) to the best comment posted before the end of October.

So please look around and explore what is already here, and make sure you visit on a regular basis and become part of something new and exciting in our industry. I look forward to seeing your comments!

* up to the value of $200

I often think that good telco billing systems are the strong silent type. While they sit in the background quietly doing their job, they are a near ‘invisible’ part of the industry. Yes, telco billing systems are one of those things that you don’t notice… until something goes wrong!

However, when billing systems go bad customers get upset and the media spotlight can be difficult to avoid. Over the years (more…)