General articles written by David, either on this site or other sites
Well done Damien Martyn! You have done a great service to Australian cricket. Your pre-emptive strike at the selectors reminds them that as a player, you can choose your own destiny as well, and that if they don’t take succession planning seriously, Aussie cricket will be in crisis in 2-3 years (if not sooner). Your timing through the off-side has always been exquisite and effortless, but sometimes your shot selection has let you down. In…
David Werdiger likes challenging trends when it comes to call rates, observing simple trends in the number of calls people make, and reflects on why people do not think as much about the cost of the calls, so they make more of them. “I like nothing more than mining through the millions of CDRs that we collect and process on behalf of our Partners (actually, I do like more than that, but some things are…
David Werdiger predicts there is not going to be major changes when it comes to mid-sized service providers in telco market, not because there is no interest in buying smaller companies, but because there are no sellers. This is because typical little fish turns over anything from a few thousand to a few million per month, and they have established niche or vertical markets using a variety of methods. “Not a month goes by without…
David Werdiger talks about commission for mobile phone sales, how it is justified and how it is unfair that mobile phone dealers who gain recurring commissions on bills going to their customers are now in the spotlight of shame. Why do people not accept that an agent who sold you something cannot get an income stream as compensation? “Lately the finger has been pointed at the mobile phone dealers who gain recurring commissions on bills going…
David Werdiger discusses telco billing systems, and how difficult they are to get right. “Yes, telco billing systems are one of those things that you don’t notice … until something goes wrong! Telco billing is hard. Damn hard. All those CDRs, all those rate plans, all that processing. On the billing scale of complexity, telco is right up the top. We run billing environments with some of the wildest schemes anyone could think of, all in the…
David Werdiger wonders why fixed-wire service providers don’t also offer mobiles. “Firstly, the provisioning systems needed to be real-time rather than batch. You couldn’t just send over a file of phone numbers to a wholesale carrier to get them churned and placed on the white list. You had to have a system that connected (via a secure VPN) to a carrier system (which may or may not have existed). These things take many months to implement, from…
Customer problems often cannot be solved in 5 minutes, says David Werdiger from his personal experience. The short cut often ends up with collateral damage that takes much longer to repair. “One of the facts of life is that most people like to be accommodating. Customer has a small request … so you say ‘sure, that can be done, it’s just a 5 minute fix’. How many times have we said this, only to regret…
Customers receiving statements for accounts in credit by a TV bill is a topic tackled by David Werdiger in this article, where he talks about his monthly Foxtel bill and the expectations from it. “I’m very excited today, because my monthly Foxtel bill has arrived. Ordinarily, a pay TV bill would not get me excited (not even me!), but this bill is very special to me. Every month, Foxtel send me a statement showing that…
David Werdiger reflects on next generation of mobile phone plans, 30-second billing plans and the introducing of 1-minute billing in NextG plans, which is standard practice in the USA. “The next generation of coverage, speed, services has brought us the next generation of mobile phone plans. The early days of mobile phone billing brought us my favourite item in the smoke-and-mirrors toolchest: 30-second billing. Now Telstra’s NextG has pushed it to the next level, and…
(note: I wrote this back in 2003, as indicated by the post date, and am placing it now (2007) on the blog for posterity. Many of the numbers have changed since that time) Some people have dubbed me a “gastronomic Zionist” – having traveled 8,000 miles for a decent meal. I am currently in the middle of a 10-week sojourn in Israel, principally for my family to have a living experience here, to support the…
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