pie discussion, page-4

Agreed

From a Telstra point of view I have a few ideas why it takes so long to get a final rollout announced and started

The Webphone needs to be Telstra-ized
In the current environment of absolute 'customer focus' within Telstra a sub standard consumer experience will not
be risked.

- Integrating the support structure into the Telstra support model. You report a fault with a web phone into the Telstra main number, where does it go, who answers this query and where do the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th level support jobs get assigned.

- Integrating the Pie Network into Telstra's Network. The internal and external security reviews alone that would need to undertaken.

- Obtaining the 5 9s (99.999% availability) Telco grade service levels with multiple levels of system redundancies to support this. Possible Stress and load testing to ensure reliability under all circumstances. This even more important if Telstra is going to offload Voice and Data traffic from mobiles.

- Branding, the longer they take to brand the Pie Webphone the better. Image the market impact if this given a T-name (T-box, T-hub etc), T-Station maybe (God I hope). This would fully commit Telstra to the success of the Webphone and the profile would be huge.

- Accounting, when micro payments are gathered the audit trails need to be created to monitor and funds allocate correctly, sometimes to 3rd parties.

Even more that I haven't thought of?

So any supplier to Telstra has to have the patience and tenacity to see this thru to the end.
The only way to grease this bureaucratic wheel is thru peer to peer engagement with individual people. The old boys network can assist or even just advise who is the correct person to assist on each step of the difficult path.

Some suppliers have failed at this last hurdle, but once scaled and a high quality product delivered the supplier is ensconced and Telstra will work to make it successful.

Lastly
I assume that the move to Sydney will facilitate this process and not just reduce the commute for the Sydney based Pie people.