Who wants to bet woosh will be dead by years end? comments please!

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Who wants to bet woosh will be dead by years end? comments please!

paradoxsm

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#7165 24-Mar-2006 15:39

We have an office bet that woosh won't survive the year out... They are only living so far on the few students and daring phone service users out there.

Reason being is that they were great when they launched and then did the dirty on people.. bad service and stuff for existing customers and exorbidant startup fees for anyone who is thinking of connecting.

I got my modem for $80 off trademe and connected free without contract, as though I buy and connect a secondhand mobilephone.

Now to connect to Woosh it's:
$200 for a phone service and $200 penalty to disconnect within 12 months
$100 for a internet only service and $100 penalty to disconnect within 12 months

And when it's over you get NOTHING to keep. A mobile phone on contract, at least you keep the phone when paying the penalty.

All existing previously purchased modems about that a user might like to hand down to a mate incur the same $100 connection fee and 12 month contract...
Does Telecom charge you to reconnect a mobile phone? NO! Free as because they WANT your business!

Goodbye Woosh.... Sadly poor management and corporate greediness have ruined what was a fantastic concept.

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#31428 24-Mar-2006 17:23

Well it would be unfortunate really. After such a huge investment. Oh well we can look forward to Indranet.

alasta

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#31429 24-Mar-2006 17:29

I'm a very satisfied customer of Woosh and would hate to see them disappear, but I admit that you may well be right.

I think your critism of their connection fees is valid, but I don't think that's what will finish them off. The final nail in their coffin will be Vodafone's HSDPA roll-out, which the mainstream media are speculating will be a viable competitor to ADSL. Okay, let's be honest, HSDPA won't have a hope in hell of competing with ADSL with respect to speed, but the average Internet user (i.e., the sort of person who doesn't frequent Geekzone) isn't likely to benefit from any speed over 1Mbps at this point in time. This type of user may well value cost and convenience over connection speed.

Getting back to the subject at hand, Woosh's investors are astute business people and one would imagine that they must have a contingency plan to deal with the impending threat from Vodafone, but I'm still sceptical.

paradoxsm

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#31430 24-Mar-2006 17:41

Hopefully... I really want them to last though there are some nasty threats from Vodafone especially and LLU which will see them haemmorage to their doom.

Remember the way to do business is to be honest and upfront and BUILD up your customer base, your first years won;'t be too good but you'll have 1 loyal customer who will tell 3 others and build up a lot or high quality, decent customers...... not try and milk huge charges early on in the process any and every way you can do it to annoy them as woosh appaer to be doing recently.

Only one business can screw you and charge what they like and get away with it..... the banks..

Currently their 1000 of so disgruntled customer have told 10,000 who have further passed it on to another 3,000 (estimates),, woosh is known as being pretty dodgy in general.. My own dealing with them have been pretty good and i'm happy with service but I don't phone helpdesks and run rather hacked up equpment..

SURVIVE!

alasta

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#31432 24-Mar-2006 18:49

paradoxsm: Currently their 1000 of so disgruntled customer have told 10,000 who have further passed it on to another 3,000 (estimates),, woosh is known as being pretty dodgy in general.. My own dealing with them have been pretty good and i'm happy with service but I don't phone helpdesks and run rather hacked up equpment..

Yes, whilst my own experience of Woosh has been generally very positive, it seems that most feedback out there in the market is quite negative. I'm not convinced that Woosh deserve their blemished reputation but, at the end of the day, it must still be hurting their bottom line.

paradoxsm

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#31433 24-Mar-2006 18:56

The sad thing is... they don't really, they have been the victim of a lot of abuse.

A lot plagued with the network issues in the early days but more so the recent problems with billing and sloppy helpdesk... Someone just needs to get in there and overhaul it majorly and save them from the current rot. Even if the plans went up and startup fees were less. ($50 with no contract type thing) still covering the customer churn fee but not using it to discourage.

Lipex666

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#31452 24-Mar-2006 23:35

I still think Woosh as a while to run and lets hope the goverment has some balls and force unbundling and Woosh should last.

But if we keep the same as we have now and with ADSL2+ which Telecom as said will start in June and with Vodafone HSDPA by ends year and HUSPDA upgrade further down the track Woosh will be up for pushing it.

I had Woosh at one time but it was not as good as I get from Ihug like rain fade etc.

Perhaps we can add Wimax into this as well but as long as Telecom holds all the strings we dont have many options.

"The only way to learn some- thing is to do it"

alasta

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#31454 24-Mar-2006 23:45

Lipex666: I still think Woosh as a while to run and lets hope the goverment has some balls and force unbundling and Woosh should last.

How could unbundling possibly be a positive thing for Woosh? Under the status quo, Woosh has an advantage in the market because they have their own infrastructure which circumvents the cost of using Telecom's infrastructure. LLU would mean that companies such as Orcon and Callplus could set up shop overnight without the need to build any infrastructure of their own, and it is widely believed that this would be a huge competitive threat to Woosh.

It has been reported here in the past that Woosh's technology is capable of functioning at much higher speeds than it currently is, but it is unknown whether it would be economically viable for them to offer higher speeds and still rival the pricing of equivalent ADSL offerings.

I'm willing to up the stakes here and suggest that Woosh's investors will either pump a large amount of additional equity into the company, or call it quits within the next six months. It will be very interesting to see how things pan out.

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Lipex666

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#31456 24-Mar-2006 23:54

Yes but this would also allow customers to of Woosh to roam on other networks.

I think Woosh would be a nich player but you never know with the money invested they wont call it quits. I dont see why say some ISP like Ihug, Orcon could now not buy out Woosh and use them as a mobile offering to Telecom and Vodafone or Woosh tie in with a current ISP as a mobile provider.

I still think Woosh has a part to play and in this market who knows look at trademe.

"The only way to learn some- thing is to do it"

paradoxsm

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#31458 24-Mar-2006 23:59

The main reason unbundling did not go ahead earlier was to help protect woosh and also proving that it was not nessesary to LLU to offer an alternative phone service, Woosh were just a little slow in getting phone up and running,
(you didn't hear that from me)

They're going to need to something fast before they get eaten and buried by new technologies and big corporates (read VODAFONE)., there are a lot of 12 motnh Woosh contracts ending and a nice free ADSL modem installation. I wonder what their network would cost, I'd gladly buy it for $1 (like most liquidated things) and start up a proper VoIP telco off it.

Remember Vodafone was investing in woosh but then something better for them was on the Horizon HDSPA (or whatever acronym it is this time)

Lipex666

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#31459 25-Mar-2006 00:09

Yep I aggree I think Woosh looked real sweet to Vodafone at the time compared to GPRS as Woosh was like 3G now and seemed to be a soluation for Vodafone so much so that where looking at investing and they where pushing and selling Woosh to counter Telecom mobile broadband aka T3G which was on the horizion.

Back then there was not so much global Vodafone - now what we see in In germany / Portugal and other Vodafone Opco's we see being done here.

But how can anyone compete with between your home line and a Telecom 027 mobile for just $10 a month.

"The only way to learn some- thing is to do it"

paradoxsm

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#31463 25-Mar-2006 00:18

By releasing a counter offer... call any other 021/029 mobile for just $10... THAT would be even more fantastic.

OR For Vodafone to take charge suddenly and release high user discounts "name your price... Commit to an amount of say $130 a month and well throw out the red carpets for you Just like Australia's CAPS"

(EG for $150 a month you get at least 1200 Anytime minutes, or at least 2,500 SMS, or 2,400 MMS and you use it HOW YOU WANT)

Lipex666

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#31467 25-Mar-2006 00:26

Dare I say it - $10.00 txt

Vodafone and others are going to have to offer something different / smarter as if they had gone down the $10.00 txt path as we all know Telecom would have come back with $5.00 txt and then so forth and $1.00 txt and we consumers would all would be laughing and both opco's would be bleeding money like a bull race in spain. We all have a 027 Mon to friday and a 021 Sat - Sunday.

No Vodafone and others are going to have to come up with something smarter and the Commerce Commission wont make a decision soon.

This means we consumers may get some great deals coming up and number portability April 2007 oh I cant wait.

"The only way to learn some- thing is to do it"

juha

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#31496 25-Mar-2006 12:04

Well, Woosh made some ten staff redundant week before last, including the general manager of sales and marketing, Sandra Geange.

I spoke to Sandra about this, but she didn't seem too worried. Woosh is, according to her, going at great shakes, with record sales growth over the last few months. February was their best month ever.

Those sort of statements must be taken with a huuuuge pinch of salt however, until there are some actual, verifiable figures at hand. I still wonder how Woosh counts its customers actually... 15,000 seems on the high side. Wired Country for instance never reached more than 2,000 or so customers for both its fixed and wireless network service, before Counties Power lost its bottle and sold it.

Juha

alasta

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#31499 25-Mar-2006 12:47

juha: Well, Woosh made some ten staff redundant week before last, including the general manager of sales and marketing, Sandra Geange.

I spoke to Sandra about this, but she didn't seem too worried. Woosh is, according to her, going at great shakes, with record sales growth over the last few months. February was their best month ever.

Was there any commercial justification given for making the sales and marketing manager redundant? Surely this is would be a core function of the business?

juha

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#31500 25-Mar-2006 13:01

alasta: Was there any commercial justification given for making the sales and marketing manager redundant? Surely this is would be a core function of the business?

My story will be up on www.computerworld.co.nz on Monday (I hope), but apparently Bob Smith wanted to see a new face. They will have a new marketing manager though.

Juha

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