Gotalk threatens PSTN with 'unbeatable triple the difference' deal?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 03 March 2008 10:20

IT Industry - Strategy

Gotalk CEO Steve Picton explained Gotalk’s confidence in being able to make such a bold sounding offer, saying that: “We are so confident that our half price Aussie Pack offer provides clearly the best value available on the market today that we’re offering customers this guarantee: If a customer who signs up for one of our Great Escape Naked DSL plans with our VoIP Aussie Pack can show us a better value solution that is publicly available on the market today, we will refund them three times the monthly difference”.

Continuing, Picton said that: “I can think of no better way to demonstrate our confidence than to guarantee that any customer who signs up to our Naked DSL in conjunction with our VoIP Aussie Pack will always be better off or we will refund them triple the difference”.

He concluded with: “Very simple. End of story.”

It seems clear that Gotalk’s offer is a “loss leader” designed to generate new customers and further stimulate competition in the Australian broadband and VoIP marketplace.

Australia is going through an interesting broadband era, with the new Federal Labor Government promising to roll-out a Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN) network nationally, while also investigating the technology to filter every Australian Internet users’ net connection to remove access to child porn sites.

Of course there is much speculation as to what other types of content might eventually be similarly censored, with fears that political content not liked by the Government could also find itself censored, similar to the way the Chinese Government exerts control over their Internet connection through use of ‘the Great Firewall of China’.

With Telstra, Australia’s dominant telco, rolling out ADSL2+ in over 900 exchanges, at prices much higher than that of most of their competitors, and ruling out offering wholesale access to competing ISPs also wishing to resell Telstra’s ADSL2+ services, Gotalk may well have chosen the opportune time to shake up the market as never before.

It will be very interesting to see if Gotalk decide to continue their offer beyond March 2008, or re-introduce it in the future, although that will likely depend on the response of competitors who, Gotalk contends, cannot beat this offer.

Many of our readers would be quite knowledgeable in the VoIP and broadband space. Do you know if a better offer exists, or one that is very close? Clearly, if there was a better offer out there, Gotalk would not be offering “triple the monthly difference” back.

It’s a shame that some customers who might be interested in such an offer will be unable to take it up, stuck as they would likely be on a contract and unable to leave it, so what Gotalk’s competitors do to respond, in the increasingly challenging and competitive broadband and VoIP market, will be very interesting indeed to watch.