From publisher to retailer to...wireless wizard

"We like to employ people who are passionate about the business and who love the business and feel part of it -- from our CFO to our marketing person to our chief technical officer -- live and breath the business.

"If you can build that culture up and at the same time be focused and consistent with your strategy, then I think you can deliver. When things go wrong, as they do, they’ve got to join in and sort it out," he says.

Spence sits amongst his staff in an open plan office. "In the early days, customer service sat right next to me. I could see when they’re busy and when they’re not busy. I like seeing people make the right decisions and the idea is to get them comfortable where they can make decisions.

"There must be four or five people who have worked for me once before."

Small Brisbane and Melbourne Unwired offices will come online soon and would be staffed by only three or four people.

"That’s the beauty of the way we have set this business up -- we don’t need a lot of people. All the building of the network, we have outsourced to Ericsson; we outsource our fulfilment so we don’t have to get couriers and all that every day. What we’ve kept here is everything on the planning and project management side and facing the customer [marketing and PR]."


The business

"Peter Shore was right -- this coming together of the mobile phone and internet industry into this new platform is what the next five years is all about."

However, the problem with the industry is that things are so exciting that it is often hard to say no, Spence laments. "You can get distracted easily by competitive behaviour and you need to sit back and look at where the world is going, the overall trends, not what’s happening here in Sydney. I probably don’t travel enough."

Like many ISPs, if there’s anything Spence would like to see happen in this industry it would be the separation of Telstra between wholesale and retail. "I’m an absolute advocate of that -- much like what has happened with BT in the UK. But other than that, no, I have a lot of great friends at Telstra although they are fi erce competitors. I think strategically for the country [Telstra separation] would be better."

These days, Spence says he works hard Monday to Friday but keeps his weekends free for leisure activity. "One week a year I spend in the bush with a backpack on my back. I’ve been in Arnhem Land for a week. In five-and-a-half days I didn’t see another man-made thing. Not even a plane in the sky."