Telstra and Fake Stephen Conroy – Dealing With Mavericks

Posted on 26. Mar, 2009 by Cameron Reilly in Telstra

“’Have we made it impossible for bright rising stars and maverick go-getters to live within our organisation?’ When we become too preoccupied with policy, procedure, and the fine-tuning of conformity to organizational standards, in effect, we have squeezed out some of our most gifted people.” – Hans Finzel, “The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make”
(via The Practice Of Leadership)

Telstra’s ongoing failure to realize what a gift Leslie Nassar is for them boggles my mind.

But not really. I’ve had first hand experience with how poorly large organizations in Australia handle mavericks.

When I left Microsoft in 2004, it was partly a result of my blogging and slightly critical comments I made about Microsoft in a blog post. Like Telstra, Microsoft’s local management at the time felt it was unconscionable for an employee to say something negative about the company in public. And I wasn’t even saying something negative about their products, in fact it was the opposite. I said the products were great but the marketing didn’t reflect that. Which, let’s face it, wasn’t the world’s best kept secret. Everyone knew that then, as now, companies like Apple and IBM were stomping all over Microsoft’s marketing. I was just speaking what I felt was the truth. That, apparently, wasn’t one of Microsoft “core values”. Anyway, things got nasty, and I resigned.

Now – I’m not saying I’m the world’s smartest bloke, but I think in the five years since I’ve left Microsoft, I’ve demonstrated that I can do a thing or two. I think I have some potential. Could Microsoft have used that potential? Could they have embraced and extended my maverickness for their own benefit? Perhaps.

I think the same thing when I read what’s going on with Leslie at Telstra. He’s obviously demonstrated that he’s a clever and creative personality. He’s generated lots of press even before he was outed. Surely a smart company (and a smart manager) would be thinking “Let’s figure out how to use someone like this to our advantage”, and not “let’s crush him if he doesn’t fall into line”. I’ve met his big boss, Telstra’s CTO, Hugh Bradlow, a few times over the years. I’ve even done a few podcasts with him over the last year. He’s obviously a very smart guy.

But let’s be honest – Telstra has brand problems. Stop ten people at random in the street and ask them what they think about Telstra and what do you think you’ll hear? Good reports or bad reports? Surely this is a company that could benefit from someone who is smart, sassy, funny and cheeky.

Don’t fire Leslie – give him his own show on Telstra Media. Turn him into the new John Clarke.

If I had the funds, or if I was running Optus, I’d hire him in a heartbeat.

Then again, if they fire him they might be doing him a favour. It’ll give him a chance to land at a company that values people with original ideas.

UPDATE (1.45pm 26 March): Leslie sets the record straight and tells Hugh Bradlow to go fuck himself.

Testing Telstra Bigpond’s NextG vs 3 Mobile Broadband

Posted on 12. Nov, 2007 by Cameron Reilly in General, Telstra

Although I’ve been impressed with Telstra’s NextG card (the 7.2 Mobile Card Sierra AirCard 880E), including spending my lunch in a cafe today watching Henry Rollins interview Michael Chiklis on YouTube, running it full screen, it doesn’t seem to always work that well.

The NextG service is called “7.2″ which you might think (as I did) means that it runs at 7.2 mbps but apparently not for the BigPond site states:

BigPond Wireless Broadband now covers a massive 98% of the population, making it Australia’s largest wireless network. It’s also faster, with average speeds of 550kbps to 1.5Mbps, and a peak network downlink speed of 3.6Mbps.

Maybe 7.2 is the version number?

As I started to write this post, I decided to test it using a broadband speed test while I sit in the Powell Hotel in Footscray, Melbourne (here’s a link to a map to see how far I am from Melbourne’s CBD) in case you think I’m sitting near Uluru.

Here are the results of the first test:

Telstra Test One

Test run on 12/11/2007 @ 05:39 PM

Mirror: Telstra Bigpond
Data: 600 KB
Test Time: 48.4 secs

Your line speed is 101 kbps (0.1 Mbps).
Your download speed is 13 KB/s (0.01 MB/s).

OUCH!

A quick look at the network monitor shows that the card’s signal isn’t great. See image below for a screenshot.

So I ran a second test and it just got worse:

Telstra Test Two

Test run on 12/11/2007 @ 05:51 PM

Mirror: Telstra Bigpond
Data: 3 MB
Test Time: 339.42 secs

Your line speed is 72 kbps (0.07 Mbps).
Your download speed is 9 KB/s (0.01 MB/s).

Hmmm… getting worse. My third and final test for today was slightly better:

Telstra Test Three

Test run on 12/11/2007 @ 06:00 PM

Mirror: Telstra Bigpond
Data: 3 MB
Test Time: 71.87 secs

Your line speed is 341 kbps (0.34 Mbps).
Your download speed is 43 KB/s (0.04 MB/s).

For a comparison, I plugged in my NetConnect card from Three and got these results:

Three Test One

Test run on 12/11/2007 @ 06:05 PM

Mirror: OptusNet
Data: 600 KB
Test Time: 5.68 secs

Your line speed is 860 kbps (0.86 Mbps).
Your download speed is 107 KB/s (0.1 MB/s).

Three Test Two

Test run on 12/11/2007 @ 06:06 PM

Mirror: OptusNet
Data: 3 MB
Test Time: 14.96 secs

Your line speed is 1.64 Mbps (1637 kbps).
Your download speed is 205 KB/s (0.2 MB/s).

Whilst I’m not going to give up on the Telstra NextG card just yet, this afternoon’s tests haven’t been positive.

The NextG card is available for $349 plus $114.95 per month for 1Gb data (see all pricing plans here).

Three’s NetConnect card is free on a 24 month plan and costs $29 per month for 1Gb data (see full pricing plans here).

UPDATE:

I’m sitting this morning at 35 Collins Street, downstairs from the Telstra offices, and the speed is much more acceptable, although still only a third of the speed I was getting on Three last night:

Test run on 13/11/2007 @ 09:48 AM

Mirror: Telstra Bigpond
Data: 600 KB
Test Time: 7.2 secs

Your line speed is 679 kbps (0.68 Mbps).
Your download speed is 85 KB/s (0.08 MB/s).

Telstra’s “Darryl Kerrigan” image blown to bits

Posted on 17. Sep, 2007 by Cameron Reilly in Australian politics, Telstra

Back in March when I had Dr Phil Burgess, Telstra’s Group Managing Director, Public Policy and Communication, on the show, he tried to portray Telstra as Darryl Kerrigan, Michael Caton’s character from the 1997 film “The Castle“. The suggestion was that Telstra was just the poor common man getting beaten up by the big, bad Government.

This is a meme Phil’s been repeating recently and which forms the moral center of their court case again Communications Minister Helen Coonan over the OPEL deal.

That is, until today.

Unfortunately for Telstra, their PR shield has been smashed by documents dating back to June 2006 which suggest that losing the bid for the Government broadband extension program, and then challenging the lost bid in court, was always part of their strategy (link). Telstra’s strategy documents suggest using the court action to delay the new broadband roll-out until after the upcoming federal election and the expected change of Government, at which time they expect a better hearing than they get under Howard.

No mention of this, of course, on Telstra’s Now We Are Talking blog as far as I can see.

So it seems to me that Telstra might be wasting taxpayer’s money by forcing the Government to defend their decision to award the broadband contract to OPEL when Telstra had no intention of winning it in the first place. They are playing the same old Telstra bully-boy games they have played forever. Despite what Phil and Sol say about “under new management”, it’s the same old dirty Telstra bag of tricks, costing the country money and delaying the roll-out of much-needed broadband.

What do you think?