Listening to Adam Curry comment on his adventures while trying to obtain broadband in the U.K. has me thinking about how dumb monopoly infrastructure businesses can be sometimes. It seems that BT has no more ports available in Guildford for DSL. How goofy is that? How costly is that? Curry's reach is pretty broad -- it must be if I know about his troubles -- and the negative publicity would probably have shamed a North American telecomm provider into making good on the goof-up. At this point lighting up a new rack or Dslam or whatever other gear is necessary would be cheaper than sustaining the marketing shots BT is taking on this. I pity the poor DSL re-seller that is relying on BT's generosity of service.
The good news is that it seems that Easynet is falling all over themselves to try and help Adam get broadband to his new house.
Good broadband provisioning and continued quality of service are critical to good business. My friend and former curling buddy Duncan McIntosh, along with Richard Vanderlubbe, of Tripcentral.ca have built their business on a high speed communications back-bone supplied by Hamilton's own Fibrewired. One could argue that Duncan and Richard's business is the most high of the high-tech businesses that are based in Hamilton. What do they do? They run a travel agency. Using technology they have transformed the concept of the neighbourhood travel agency and they have embarked on a dramatic growth stage, as was highlighted in yesterday's Hamilton Spectator (sorry no link, the paper's site is subscriber oriented -- another dumb newspaper "innovation").
When Duncan talked to me about their plan to expand from 10 offices to 70 back in September, I asked him how he would divide the business. Would there be territories? Was this going to be a franchise? The answer was simple, using call center technology, each office would have an equal shot at the incoming requests. Tripcentral is pioneering the de-centralized call center. There is no call center, but there is good service. By providing excellent web services with good telecommunications and multiple office locations, Tripcentral.ca has developed a strategy to compete with the disintermediators of the travel industry.
To this point things have gone very well; it would make a great case study for prospective business owners and students. The next stage -- moving from a $40 million dollar company to a $200 million dollar company -- will be very interesting. While there are many willing small shop owners ready to sell and the technology roll-out is well practiced, the people and management side of the business will require special attention. That's something I know Duncan is well suited to handling.
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