by DavidSpratt | Mar 17, 2014 | ICT
Once again a major cloud provider – on this occasion Google – has slashed the price of storage – this time for ordinary consumers. Note that these changes apply to all customers not just those signing new subscriptions.
Users considering cloud storage should note their contract terms, urges David Spratt of Total Utilities Management Group. “If you are locked in to a price for two or three years you may miss many, many price cuts over the contract term, while your storage needs double or even quadruple.”
“In the business sector we expect to see continued price pressure being brought to bear on local NZ hosting, cloud server and cloud storage providers to compete with the scale, contract flexibility, reliability and sheer pricing power of the likes Google, Amazon, RackSpace HP and Microsoft.”
Read the Computer World article here
by DavidSpratt | Jan 16, 2014 | ICT
Looking back over 2013 with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the New Zealand mobile phone market was defined by four key things last year:
- The smart phone’s complete dominance of the mobile device market. Yes I know some of you still love your Nokia flip top, but the sale of loss-making Nokia’s smart phone division to Microsoft shows just how far the mighty have fallen in the market where Nokia were once supreme. Alongside this shift we have seen the rise of Samsung as a direct and powerful competitor to Apple’s iPhone range. During 2014 expect price competition to continue apace in the handset market.
- Heavy price discounting in the New Zealand market as the major players struggle with a lack of differentiation in their services, handsets and coverage.
- A shift from text-based communication to Instant Messaging. The days of businesses spending big dollars on thousands of texts a month are now largely gone. Instead smart phones are delivering Instant Messaging and email services to the user over mobile data networks.
- The rapid expansion of mobile data services usage. For each of the last three years the uptake of smart phone and 3G and 4G capable tablet devices has meant a doubling of mobile data consumption year on year. In 2014 most businesses will be using eight times the mobile data they consumed back in 2011. Double that again in 2015 and that consumption number becomes 16 times!
So what is the smartest response to these four biggies when budget setting for 2014? Read more…
by DavidSpratt | Jan 16, 2014 | ICT
Last year the mobile phone market was shaped by four key factors: the dominance of the smart phone; heavy price discounting; a shift from text-based communication to Instant Messaging; and the rapid expansion of mobile data services usage. Smart budgeting for 2014 should respond to these market changes.
Capital Planning
Smart phones are much more expensive than the old flip tops, despite the increased price competition arising from Samsung’s aggressive positioning against Apple and Micosoft/Nokia. The majority of mobile calling vendors offer a ‘subsidy pool’ from which businesses draw when purchasing new or replacing old mobiles. These ‘subsidies’ are little more than a capex to opex conversion with opex increased as part of the monthly phone plan cost and capex reduced accordingly. Analysing the true cost of the subsidy and assessing whether it meets your planned replacement and new purchase requirements can save you from incurring a significant amount of wasted financial resources during the term of the contract. Note also that replacing a broken or lost phone from the subsidy pool will usually mean signing a new contract with a new expiry date. The ‘break fees’ associated with contracts provide vendors with a useful mechanism to discourage you from moving to a better deal with a new supplier when the main contract expires. (more…)
by DavidSpratt | Dec 5, 2013 | ICT
At the beginning of this week John Key appeared to rule out any delay in the Chorus roll out of 69% of the country’s Ultra-Fast Broadband network by 2020.
To date, the telecoms industry has not seen the expected level of uptake for the ultra-fast data networking services that the UFB network enables.
If recent Chorus moves to force government to legislate an increase in the Commerce Commission’s pricing for copper-based services are successful, this will further slow business uptake of these services. This will be detrimental to the wider New Zealand knowledge economy.
Chorus’s pressure on government displays all the worst characteristics of the old, monopolistic Telecom prior to de-regulation. This is unsurprising when you realise that the old guard running Telecom under Teresa Gattung has resurfaced as key members of the management and strategy teams at Chorus.
Despite causing years of declining revenues, tanking profits and plummeting share prices in Telecom, the strategy of milking consumers and NZ business for as long as possible by stalling the arrival products which compete with the old copper network seems to be alive and kicking in Chorus.
To paraphrase Sartre, the more things change in the world of Telecom and Chorus the more they stay the same…
Read the full article here
by RichardGardiner | Nov 25, 2013 | Energy
Total Utilities Management Group, New Zealand’s leading independent utilities procurement and energy management company has entered into an alliance with Australian company EnergyAdvice to deliver Trans-Tasman energy management, procurement and energy efficiency solutions for large energy users in New Zealand and Australia.
“Large organisations wanting to take a ‘whole of company’ perspective on energy and carbon management and reporting are looking for companies with a combination of global reach and local expertise to assist them,” said Total Utilities Managing Director Richard Gardiner.
“It is this need for country-specific expertise that has driven our Trans-Tasman alliance with EnergyAdvice. The relationship allows us to bring highly specific knowledge of local regulations and markets to our clients in the highly complex energy market.” (more…)
by Jonathan Gardiner | Nov 13, 2013 | Energy
By now you should have received your October natural gas accounts. If you are in the Vector or Powerco networks you should have seen a reduction in your overall cost of gas. The ‘gas year’ runs from October to September and a raft of industry costs are reviewed annually ahead of October 1st. Typically an inflation adjustment is passed through with metering, network and transmission charge changes applying.
The good news this year for most natural gas customers, especially those based in Auckland, is that the annual review should result in lower costs. The Commerce Commission has enforced two sets of reductions – in transmission and distribution. The change to transmission costs affects all customers. As such, the charging methodology and overall level of the charge has changed. (more…)
Once again a major cloud provider – on this occasion Google – has slashed the price of storage – this time for ordinary consumers. Note that these changes apply to all customers not just those signing new subscriptions.
