Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

  • The case for faster internet

    The case for faster internet

    The National Broadband Network (NBN) is a project designed to deliver faster and more reliable broadband to Australia’s regions. While a good idea, it’s not without its critics and a fair degree of controversy.

    One of the problems the project has is the inability of NBNCo, the company established to build and run the network, to articulate the benefits and scope of the project.

    Last Friday night “John from Condobolin” grilled the Gadget Guy, Peter Blasina, about the project. John’s questions, and Pete’s answers, which can be found at 35 minutes into his program, illustrates the confusion the surrounds NBN and the failure of the project’s supporters to explain the benefits.

    So how should proponents of the National Broadband Network – people like me who believe that high speed broadband are the freeways and railways of the 21st Century – respond to questions. Let’s answer John’s questions from last Friday.

    Lightning might affect fibre networks

    John’s first question was about lightning affecting the NBN, commenting when Pete confirmed electrical storms would affect the network that “it’s no better than the existing service.”

    Sadly all infrastructure is affected by weather – a freeway is just as affected by fog as a dirt road, perhaps even more so, but it doesn’t mean you don’t build a highway because of that. The same applies for the NBN.

    Interestingly the wireless and satellite alternatives proposed to fibre optic cable are even more susceptible to electrical storms, which perversely makes a better argument for running a fibre optic network.

    I don’t need any NBN

    “I have got quite good reception in Condobolin and I don’t need any NBN, I can assure you” was John’s next big statement.

    That’s nice for John that he’s happy with what he has – the rest of us should be so lucky.

    For many of his neighbours and those in the surrounding district, particularly those dealing with remote suppliers and overseas markets, reliable and fast communications are essential.

    Now is good enough

    A farmer doesn’t need broadband for selling into America, he’s able to do that today, was the crux of John’s next comment after he and Pete had an exchange about rolling broadband out to remote locations.

    It’s true that farmers can do a lot with today’s satellite and ADSL connections, then again they were able to ship exports in the days of bullock carts and sailing ships. We could extend that argument against railway lines, roads, containers and bulk carriers.

    Once upon a time some guy argued against the wheel. Today’s technology has been good enough has always been the argument of those who don’t see the benefits of new tools; we’re talking about tomorrow’s markets and society, not today’s.

    Broadband is all about fibre

    “You’re talking about satellite dishes and things like that, not NBN.”

    The National Broadband Network isn’t just about fibre; fibre optic cables makes up the network’s core and bulk of connections, but wireless and satellite are essential in order to make sure the entire nation has access to the network.

    Unfortunately the nonsense argument that technology improvements in wireless will render fibre optics redundant has been allowed to take hold by self-interested politicians and sections of the media pushing a narrow agenda.

    Wireless, satellite, fibre optic and other cable technologies are all part of the mix, the real argument is on the proportions of that combination and the consequences to the government’s budget.

    Spotting the clueless

    As an aside, the cable versus wireless argument is a good yardstick for measuring the knowledge of anyone joining the NBN debate.

    Someone clueless arguing against the project says investment in fibre optic cable is unnecessary as it’s speed and data capacities will be one day superseded by those of Wireless networks.

    This betrays a failure to grasp the inherent advantage of having a dedicated cable connection to your property as opposed to sharing a wireless base station with hundreds, if not thousands, of others.

    Equally anyone pro-NBN who says that fibre is faster because it travels at the speed of light is equally clueless as wireless, copper wire and even smoke signals also travel at – or close to – the speed of light.

    Games and videos

    “Is this only to watch videos and DVDs?” was John’s last question.

    Well, does Condobolin have a video store? A quick Google search shows it does, along with local and satellite TV stations. So the residents of Condobolin are just keen as the rest of us to watch the tube.

    Increasingly our viewing habits are moving online and fast broadband is necessary to deliver that. John may be happy to exclude his town from being able to do that, but my guess is plenty of his neighbours would like to have that option.

    What’s more, many of those farmers, processors, trucking companies and other service providers in the Condobolin region will need those video facilities for tele-conferencing with suppliers, customers and training companies.

    Building for the future

    Video conferencing isn’t the only application for what we consider today to be high speed networks, these are going to change society and business in the same way the motor car changed us in the 20th Century and railways and telegraph in the 19th.

    Australia made a mess of the railways and the roads, in both areas we’re still playing catch up. The National Broadband Network is an opportunity to avoid the mistakes of the last hundred years and get the 21st Century right.

    Unfortunately, the objectives of building a better nation are being lost in a fog of disinformation, political opportunism and corporate incompetence. We can do better than this.

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  • The dying Yelp of Sensis

    The dying Yelp of Sensis

    This story originally appeared on Technology Spectator

    Fifteen years ago Sensis, the directories arm of Telstra, was untouchable. A listing in the Yellow and White Pages was essential for every business and Sensis’ monopoly was a true river of gold.

    Sensis’ launch this week of an Australian partnership with the US based review site Yelp is Telstra’s desperate throw of the dice to survive in a market where its directories business has become irrelevant.

    Attempts to stay relevent

    There have been many attempts by Sensis to overcome this erosion of its core maket including purchasing an IT services business and unsuccessful forays into publishing and online search with Trading Post and CitySearch.

    Probably Sensis’ lowest point was the squandered millions of dollars and years of management time wasted in trying to compete against Google after Telstra CEO Sol Trujilo made the sneering comment of “Google Schmoogle”.

    Declining values

    At the time of Trujillo’s comment in 2005 Sensis was valued at $10 billion as a stand alone company. After last week’s disappointing results that saw revenue drop 18 per cent for the year, the value of the division is an optimistic $5 billion.

    Yelp itself is unlikely to help Sensis’ revenue woes. Despite filing for a $100 billion public offering, Yelp has never made a profit in its seven years of operation. Although licensing their service to failing directory companies around the world might prove to be a handy revenue stream.

    That lack of profit – on North American revenues that are tiny compared to Sensis’ Australian cashflow ­– shows the fallacy in the social media business model that many of the popular online services are faced with.

    Users of social media services like Yelp are looking for a community of trustworthy and relevant referrals. The directory sale model is based on displaying the biggest advertisers prominently, which is exactly what social media users don’t want.

    Yelp also comes into a marketplace already crowded with competing, established services like Word Of Mouth Online, Eatability, and the faster moving social media platforms like Foursquare.

    Competitors’ Missed Opportunities

    In many ways Sensis has been lucky in that most of the competition has been from smaller upstarts while their bigger competitors haven’t capitalised on the market opportunities.

    Google Places, the biggest competitor to the world’s Yellow Pages directories, is mired in bureaucracy and isn’t doing a good job in telling business its story while Facebook’s local search function isn’t getting much traction either.

    Of the local Australian incumbents, ninemsn isn’t interested in local business with its international partner Microsoft not offering an Australian product and the local team preferring to deal with big spending advertising agencies, while Fairfax squandered its early advantage and eventually sold the CitySearch service to Sensis.

    News Limited’s True Local is having limited success while it struggles with the transition from print to online. At News’ recent launch of its new digital platform, the company’s executives stated they expected journalists to develop a “digital mind”.

    Lacking a Digital Mindset

    That “digital mindset” is the key to the problem at companies like News Limited, Fairfax and Sensis. In a marketplace where customers, advertising and readers have moved online it requires management, not just the lower workers, to “think digital”.

    Sensis’ key problem is its management structures – and more importantly its sales teams’ commissions and KPIs – which are still based around its traditional business models that will make selling services like Yelp difficult.

    The phone directory business model is a product of the 1920s and in many ways Telstra and the other Yellow Pages franchisees around the world should be grateful it has lasted so long.

    Whether the phone directories that have been so profitable for phone companies can make it to their one hundredth birthday is an open question. One thing is for sure, bolting on an unprofitable and late to market social media service isn’t the answer.

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  • The creative deadbeat

    The creative deadbeat

    This post originally appeared on the Xero Accounting blog under the title “Sorry, we’re not paying you”.

    “Your star readings were negative after you serviced my computer,” the astrologer said sweetly, “so I’m afraid I will not be paying you.” Then she hung up. It was a good start to the week.

    In business, bad payers are an unfortunate fact of life, one of the redeeming features is most of us end up with a great collection of reasons deadbeat customers give to justify not paying their bills.

    Along with the downright strange is the quasi-legal; “your tax file number is in the wrong format, so we can’t pay your invoice” is one of the better excuses I heard in the years of running my business.

    “I gave your technician a cup of coffee while she was here, so you’ll have to give me a credit” was another great claim.

    A teacher once threatened to report my business to her union on the basis we were exploiting low paid women workers. The funny thing was we’d cut her a big discount because I realised she’d struggle to pay the full rate.

    Big boys’ excuses

    Those excuses were from smaller customers, but the corporate sector can be no better, some of them treat their suppliers as banks who give them an interest free loan

    One multinational suffering cash flow problems decided to pay all bills after 270 days, regardless of the agreed payment terms. They didn’t bother with excuses and their accounts team were blunt – if suppliers didn’t like it, they could sue and wait five years for their money.

    That company had its come-uppance when every supplier in the country put the company on a cash up-front basis to avoid a nine month wait.

    Another big corporation decided to tangle their contractors in knots by implementing an arcane system involving submitting an invoice by the 30th of month one, backing it up with a statement of account by the 20th of month two paying thirty days later. Make a mistake or miss a date and the whole cycle started again.

    Probably the most irritating excuses can come from government departments, a common one being, “our budget has run out for that item, so we can’t pay your invoice until the next financial year. Would you be able to reissue it under a new purchase order for paperclips?”

    Chasing the bad news

    A truism with collecting debts is the longer we let them slide, the less likely it is they will be paid so we have to be on the ball in chasing those late payers.

    In Xero’s accounting software you nominate the due date when creating the invoice and this will appear on the copy the customer receives.

    As soon as the due date has passed without payment, follow up with a reminder or a phone call.

    Whenever you have a slow payer, it’s best to talk to them. Showing you watch our money closely indicates to the customer that you are serious about your bills.

    Identify problem customers

    The good thing about late payments is it’s a pretty reliable guide to who is a bad customer – if they constantly pay bills late, then you don’t need them in your business life and it’s time to get rid of them.

    More insidious is the good client gone bad – a previously good payer who suddenly starts making excuses could be in financial trouble. If so, it’s worthwhile making sure your business isn’t too exposed if that client suddenly goes under.

    At one client the secretary insisted on paying most of our bill out of petty cash. Two weeks later the company, a Scotch whisky broking service, closed shop and left thousands of angry customers and suppliers out of pocket. It took the creditors ten years to get a fraction of their money back and the secretary did us a great favour.

    Not every late payer is a bad guy though, even in the best of times good customers can hit a bad patch so making arrangements with a good customer who has hit a rough patch can be a good long term strategy.

    Incidentally, the astrology lady eventually did pay her bill. Attached was a note explaining something about planets transiting Scorpio during a waxing moon. We never heard from her again.

    At least with bad payers we get to have a laugh at their excuses later, what the best stories you’ve heard from deadbeat customers?

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  • Leaving Facebook

    Leaving Facebook

    In our social media segment for December 2011’s ABC Nightlife a listener asked about closing down their Facebook account.

    Leaving Facebook isn’t easy, but it can be done and we’ve covered closing down a Facebook profile on the Netsmarts website.

    The December Nightlife spot looked at a lot of social media issues and answered other listener’s questions about some of the challenges online. Some of those questions are listed on the page and the program

    December’s spot was the last for 2011 and next scheduled Nightlife spot will be on February 9 however we will probably have some segments over the Christmas period and we’ll let newsletter subscribers know as we find out.

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  • Comparing local review and search sites

    Comparing local review and search sites

    With the Australian launch of local search and recommendation site Yelp, it’s worthwhile comparing the different sites to see how well they worked.

    The sites work in different ways, some – like Sensis Yellow Pages and True Local – are online directories that search just the title and description of business.

    Yelp, Foursquare and Word Of Mouth Online, are socially based and derive their searches on the content and number of community reviews. Their algorithms, the formulas to figure out what customers are looking for, are more complex than the basic online directories.

    Most complex of all are the hybrid searches, notably Google Places and Facebook Places, that build local upon their search and social media data.

    Each model has it’s own strengths and weaknesses which shows when we do a search. Due to time restrictions we only did two.

    Looking for brunch in Neutral Bay, NSW

    The first search was using what somebody might be expected to search for on a casual weekend or holiday morning. Neutral Bay and surrounding suburbs have plenty of cafes catering to the brunch crowd so it should be expected to return plenty of hits.

    Yelp

    search results for neutral bay brunch on yelp

    The new contender only found one local result and the rest being on the other side of the Harbour Bridge, including one at Bondi Beach which may as well be in the Upper Amazon to the average Sydney North Shore dweller.

    Interestingly, entering neighbouring suburbs changes the first two or three results to that suburb but the subsequent listings are the same remote locations as for the Neutral Bay query. This might indicate popularity with the current Yelp users or may be part of the package merchants get when they pay for a listing.

    True Local

    a search on true local for brunch in neutral bay

    News Limited’s True Local disappointed one cafe in the district was identified and the number one result was in the city.

    This poor results are probably due to the word “brunch” not appearing in the local cafes’ descriptions or titles, but this is a serious weakness for True Local, particularly in a district where they dominate the local news media.

    Google Places

    brunch local search results for google places

    Surprisingly, Google Places returned an extremely poor result with no local businesses found.

    Again, this is probably due to the failure of business owners to ensure keywords are entered in their business description and it illustrates how Google is allowing an opportunity to pass them by.

    Facebook Places

    Facebook Places results from Neutral Bay brunch searchNothing. Nyet. Zip. No brunch for you.

    Yahoo!7

    yahoo local search results

    Another poor result that has just scraped information off the web. It shows the weakness of the Yahoo! and Channel Seven joint venture which, like News Limited, is letting opportunities pass.

    Bing/NineMSN

    Local search results on NineMSN for Neutral Bay Lunch

    Probably the most disgraceful of the results, NineMSN returned two cafes for the whole of Sydney, a city of four million people.

    The second result entailed, according to Bing’s directions, a 38km drive timed at an optimistic 23 minutes involving $9 in tolls and an illegal u-turn.

    NineMSN’s performance shows just how irrelevant Microsoft has become in the online space and their Australian joint venture partner is more interested in selling big integrated campaigns to advertising agencies.

    Given NineMSN and Bing are the default browser and search engine on nearly two million computers sold in Australia each year, not having a local business strategy is squandering a massive opportunity.

    Citysearch/Sensis

    brunch local search on Citysearch for Neutral Bay

    Founded by Fairfax, Citysearch could have been a great success combining the assets and readership of Fairfax’s metropolitan and local newspapers coupled with their experienced sales teams selling advertising space and subscriptions. Good management could have done this.

    Sadly Fairfax was being run by Professor Fred Hilmer and his army of power suited McKinsey consultants and Citysearch was eventually sold for a pittance to Sensis, who have allowed it to shrivel away as the zero result for our search shows.

    Eatability

    local search on eatability for neutral bay brunch

    Eatability was a genuine surprise, returning no brunch establishments in the area. The only thought is that no cafe in the neighbourhood has the word “brunch” in their keywords. Still a very poor result.

    Urbanspoon

    local search for brunch at neutral bay on urbanspoon

    The web version of Urbanspoon returned the most bizarre result, correctly finding one local cafe but misinterpreting the address as being in Bankstown on the other side of Sydney.

    Urbanspoon’s iPhone app returned a far better range of results in surrounding suburbs although it only found one cafe actually in Neutral Bay which wasn’t the one incorrectly found on their web app, which didn’t appear at all.

    Word of Mouth Online

    word of mouth online local search for brunch in neutral bay

    Word Of Mouth Online delivered the best result of the web pages with two of the first three results being relevant. Of the other seven, they met the criteria of being within a 5km radius of the location which in Sydney can be a 12km drive.

    The results would have been better with more local establishments but it appears the keyword “brunch” hasn’t been used by many of the WOMO reviewers.

    Note: After the review I was contacted by the founder of WOMO, Fiona Adler, it appears some of the reviews have have been updated in the meantime. I’ve changed the results below, but the left the one above as it was correct at the time of the review.

    Foursquare

    neutral bay local brunch search on four square

    Like Yelp, Foursquare relies heavily on users’ contributions and this shows in the flaky, almost useless results for our search terms on a web based search.

    Foursquare’s iPhone app was far more efficient, identifying a range of good venues in the area which were ranked according to friends’ recommendations.

    Sensis/Yellow Pages

    search for brunch on yellow pages for local brunch in neutral bay

    Again, “no brunch for you.” It’s almost scandalous that Yellow Pages has no entries at all for “brunch” for an inner Sydney suburb.

    Redoing the search

    Clearly the term “brunch” is problematic in all the services, so as a check here’s the relevant first page results for other search terms on each of the services;

    Service Café Neutral Bay Breakfast Neutral Bay Lunch Neutral Bay
    Yelp 7/10 2/10 7/10
    True Local 9/30 0/30 0/30
    Google Place 10/10 0/10 10/10
    Yahoo!7 not relevant
    Bing/MSN 3/10 0/10 0/10
    Citysearch 6/10 3/6 4/4
    Eatability 40/50 8/8 23/31
    Urban spoon 3/3 0/0 0/0
    foursquare 3/20 1/20 1/20
    WOMO 8/10 2/10 5/10
    Sensis 7/10 0/10 0/10

    As we found with the earlier search, Yelp was somewhat inconsistent and no doubt the social aspects will see it improve as more users come on board, the results are highly dependent on the terms used by reviewers and this will affect the search results.

    True Local’s score was surprisingly bad, the search for “cafe” found 12 places but three are long closed. “Breakfast” listed B&B accomodation and “lunch” found outlets in the city and Eastern Suburbs.

    Google Places also disappointed on “breakfast”, picking up some B&B establishments along with some city cafes. This is almost certainly due to keywords missing in descriptions.

    Yahoo!7 doesn’t get a rating as all it does is scrape other sites and often refers you to other search services. They are just going through the motions.

    Microsoft and NineMSN’s service again failed dismally; the “cafe” result was poor, “breakfast” looked for B&Bs and “lunch” amazingly didn’t find a thing in Neutral Bay.

    Citysearch’s results for “cafe” found nine places, three of which are long closed which indicates the lack of maintenance their database receives. Encouragingly, Citysearch was one of the best performers for lunch and dinner, albeit only on four and six places found.

    Eatability had by far the most impressive number of results, however a large proportion of the places have closed and are not flagged as such. This probably indicates a lack of maintenance by the owners.

    WOMO was good and like Yelp their results are highly dependent on the words used by reviewers, so key words could be missed simply because reviewers didn’t use them.

    Sensis performed well on “cafes” except that three of the ten listed were closed. The lack of results on “breakfast” and “lunch” is due to no places having those words in their name.

    Conclusions

    This comparison is not scientific, being based on a narrow search and small sample size, but there’s a few things we can take away from the experiment.

    Search is still young

    Right now, search is still a crude tool.

    From the results, we can see that the keywords used by reviewers and businesses matter. If the public are looking for “brunch” and that isn’t on your cafe’s website and online listings, then you won’t appear.

    Over time that will change as the web and search engines get smarter but right now search is still at a basic stage in its development.

    You have to be there

    Customers are using these tools to find what they need and if a business isn’t listed, then they can’t be found. Setting up a profile and getting some favourable reviews is important.

    The business who are being pro-active are the ones who are succeeding.

    There’s a lot of opportunity

    It’s no surprise that older organisations like Fairfax, Sensis and Microsoft are failing to understand local search. What is suprising is how poorly the newer players like Google and Facebook are doing.

    This opens up a lot of opportunity for services like Yelp and Foursquare in adding value to the data already available through services like Google, Facebook and Sensis.

    Yelp’s tie up with Sensis makes a lot of sense from the US company’s point of view; they get to ride on Sensis’ sales team, maybe some licensing fees and – most importantly – they can access the richest, albeit not always accurate, database of Australian businesses.

    For small, local business there’s a lot of opportunity as well. By getting online and registered on these services, it’s possible to become more visible and improve your competitive position.

    The market’s young and there’s a lot of potential for disruptive players. It will be interesting to see how incumbents deal with the threat.

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