tls to pay approx $25 million, page-6

Defies logic.
Quality of connections is an enormous issue. This is what killed One-tel because street corner hustlers were just pushing phones onto anyone with a name and one-tel were paying on them. Of course if you provide the bulk of the commission upfront the channel is not going to care much about the quality. Clawbacks usually last 1-3 months so at least there is some cover, but it is not a particularly good safety net and doesn't deter your channels from pushing rubbish through.

I'm not suggesting telstra are in a situation like one-tel, but the incentive is there with upfront commissions to ramp up the volume and rake it in with little regard for how that customer performs from a commercial perspective.

I can tell you Orange was moving towards paying more trailing in preference to upfront commissions and that was two years ago.

T-mobile was looking to "balance" their commission structure and another big mobile UK company I am currently working at is moving all of its franchisees (as a starting point) towards lower upfront fees and higher trailing commissions.

It just makes more sense for a telco. Unless telstra have done the numbers an reckon they will keep more of the customer lifetime value pie, but this totally disregards the type of behaviour upfront commissions encourage from the distribution channels, which in my view will degrade the overall quality of connections.


I wonder who is driving this and whether they are new to the role or new to the mobiles business.

Perhaps telstra have lost so much market share that they are wanting to get this back with upfront incentives.

Baffling but good for VTG. 25m upfront cash.

Watch their sales go through the roof now that their sales people will be paid bigger commissions on sales.