EFTel hires industry veteran to lead wholesale charge

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 11 February 2009 04:03

IT Industry - Market

ISP EFTel (ASX: EFT) is ramping up its wholesale offerings with the launch of an expanded wholesale division headed up by industry veteran Warwick Pye.

The new business, EFTel Wholesale, will comprise EFTel's existing wholesale business, the wholesale business of recently acquired ISP Concept - a Perth based ISP that served a large number of smaller virtual ISPs - and wholesaling of services on EFTel's own BroadbandNext network and outsourced call centre services delivered from EFTel's offshore call centre in Cyberjaya in Malaysia.

Recently appointed CEO, John Lane, told itWire "Warwick has been hired to lead our wholesale sales effort which is chiefly directed at filling up the ports on the BroadbandNext network and at selling outsourced call centre services.

Pye joins EFTel with over 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, including roles as managing director of Telstra Greater China, managing director of Telstra Singapore, director of sales at Soul, and general manager of sales at Pipe Networks.

Lane said: "What we are aiming to do is move up the food chain. We are looking for mid large ISPs that are looking for alternatives to Telstra and Optus." EFTel has already signed up Dodo as a wholesale customer for BroadbandNext.

Lane claimed that "With BroadbandNext we can provide a DSL2 service at a price significantly lower than anybody else's because our cost base is significantly lower than anybody else's."

He attributed this in part to EFTel "being late to the market" explaining that "we waited until equipment costs had come down," and in part to EFTel having "offshored a lot of our labour to [our call entre] in Kuala Lumpur." The MSANs for BroadbandNext were supplied by Huawei.

Lane added: "BroadbandNext delivers lower costs per port as well as superior products - ADSL2+, GigE backhaul and richer control for retail ISPs over wholesale ports."

Lane said that at present EFTel had about 130 wholesale customers contributing between 10 and 15 percent of total revenues. "Wholesale today is largely resold Telstra DSL with some Optus and some IP data." But with the new focus on BroadbandNext and call centre services he said: "I would expect that to go to 50 percent within two years and possibly a lot higher.