Well at least Aldi looks safe as have negotiated direct with T.

Telstra Wholesale has been advised that ispONE has appointed Ferrier Hodgson as a voluntary administrator and the administrator has cancelled ispONEs contracts for the supply of Telstra Wholesale pre-paid mobile products.

Telstra Wholesale has entered into an interim agreement with Medion Australia for the supply of wholesale prepaid mobile services. Medion is the supplier to ALDIMobile.

ispONE had been a customer of Telstra Wholesale for mobile products as well as a broadband and a relatively small number of fixed line voice products. ispONE on-sold these products and services to retailers and in some instances to the public. For example, ispONE supplied two companies, the online retailer Kogan and Medion (who sells mobile service through the ALDIMobile brand), utilising the Telstra Wholesale pre-paid mobile product.

Telstra Wholesale Group Managing Director, Stuart Lee, confirmed that given the relationship with ispONE for pre-paid mobile services had ended, Telstra would not be accepting any requests for new Kogan Mobile services from ispONE, although people with existing services would have the opportunity to switch to other providers.

For mobiles, we will not be accepting new activations, number port-ins or processing credit recharges from ispONE on behalf of Kogan Mobile. An interim service will be available for a fixed period of time for people who have active pre-paid mobile services from Kogan Mobile so they have time to choose their next steps, said Mr Lee.

Because Medion and Telstra Wholesale have been able to negotiate a direct supply agreement there will be no changes to the services for ALDI Mobile.

People who have services through ispONE and its retail partners, such as Kogan Mobile, are not customers of Telstra. We do not have their account information and we cannot provide them any customer service support. For any questions about their service, people should contact their retail service provider, said Mr Lee.

There are limits to the industrys capacity to implement mobile number porting requests and requests to churn fixed line voice and broadband services. If large numbers of people try to switch providers at once there may be some delays across the industry.

People who want to change providers should approach their service provider of choice who can request the number port, but we would ask for patience as there are limits on how many ports the industry can undertake in addition to normal sales and activation activity. To provide for a smooth transition we are providing interim voice services across the impacted mobile and fixed line services.

I still think it sucks that Telstra can close down a competitor just because they down like the competition.It reeks of big brother to me, and should be stopped. Telecoma has Always had bad customer relations ,in my experience , and you only use they because of the coverage. They are also the most expensive. Surely the ACCC should be looking into this one. Bill

It's always a risk when you shop on price alone.

It seems to me that ispONE in trying to be the lowest cost retail supplier got its sums wrong.  Read that the administrator quoted debts as $30m. (No mention of its assets though).  With Telstra being its primary supplier then you would expect that a large chunk of that would be debt to Telstra (they claimed some $12m in the courts).

IMHO it is perhaps not a case of the big fish gobbling up the sprats but rather the big fish looking to get paid for the services that they provide.

We have seen lots of ISPs go to the wall over the years   ...  remember the Onetel fiasco?  

It was my experience (albeit some 15years ago) that some ISPs were great at grabbing price sensitive customers but less good at managing their business.

-- Edited by Cupie on Tuesday 20th of August 2013 09:11:14 AM

The problem has I read things is not Telstra being a bully it is the fact the the people Kogan and Aldi were getting access from ispOne has gone broke , Maybe Kogan and Aldi could buy ispOne

A friend has just called to say Aldi is still in the picture but Kogan has drop out and she is changing from Kogan to Aldi . Has a share holder of Telstra I enjoy great service from telstra and good return for my money a great company

All companies sml & large plus governments  are no different to us . They want as much as they can get and we want it cheap as we can get .

It is strange that you don't hear all the share holders complaining. I wonder why that is? 

Gday...

Perhaps the Title of this thread should be -

ispONE goes belly-up with debts exceeding their assets. Telstra responds to minimise any further losses to their shareholders.

Cheers - John

John spot on

Bill that may be what Kogan is telling there customers but Kogan did not have a agreement with Telstra , It was ispOne who had the contract with Telstra , Kogan was a client of ispOne , Lets be fair if the deal is to good to true there is allways an bad outcome , Remember storm in Townsville

bill12 wrote:

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I just got another email from Kogan, saying exactly what I have been saying. They are being monstered by Telstra.If you want I will post the email online, but gist as I understand it is because they quickly had over 100000 customers, the big boys got greedy and shut them down.So much for fair competition.As I said-it sucks! Bill

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 Doesn't come as a surprise that they would say that.

Be interesting to see how Aldi or their agent deals with 'the monster'.

I would suspect that a significant percentage of these customers could have been from other networks like say Vodafone with their low cost low performance/coverage network.  They may see the opportunity to get onto the quality Telstra (3G) network at a low price.

 

Perhaps none of us (including me) have sufficient data to be sure of the actual situation.  

For my part I rely on extensive first hand experience working closely with resellers, but am perhaps just a little bit biased. 

jetj wrote:

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http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/8/21/technology/charting-collapse-kogan-mobile-and-ispone

Some info here.

 

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 Thanks for that.

I have now signed up for several of the Business Spectator news letters.

I love keeping up with this sort of stuff (the Communications/Technology bits in particular) possibly as a dose of nostalgia. 

Takes me back to my working days I suppose.  I used to get a report every morning that summarised every article on Communications in the previous day's media ... A 'cutting service' I think they called it that had been commissioned for Telstra.

So what now Bill? I'm in the same boat as you. We don't have Aldi anywhere near us and they don't sell on line. Telstra is too expensive and like you I don't want to feed the monster. I'm thinking of changing to Boost. At 40 bucks a month it's a bit dearer with a little less data.Have you found anything better?

We have a Telstra mobile and an Optus mobile / TPG , We have found we can get coverage with optus when no signal with Telstra and also the other way round so have found usefull to have both . Have bee with TPG for 4 years great price Sim only no contract

Hi ..  Looks like someone's making a grab for those disaffected mobile users. 

 

Got this from the excellent Business Spectator newsletter ... thanks jetj

 

 

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/8/23/technology/kogan-mobile-customers-handed-lifeline?utm_source=exact&utm_medium=email&utm_content=395631&utm_campaign=ts_daily&modapt=