Soul refutes dealer payment claims

The article referred to Soul having "angry resellers across the country" who have been affected by Soul withholding dealer payments.

Stephen Banfield, company secretary of SP telemedia’s board of directors, said in an ASX statement: "Soul has committed agreements with many dealers in Australia but it has only recently withheld payments from five dealers, who are call centre based operators. To Soul’s knowledge, the companies from which it has held payments have no shop front stores.”

According to Banfield Soul has agreements in place with each of those five dealers which entitle Soul to withhold or claw back dealer payments in certain circumstances. “Any suggestion that Soul has wrongly withheld money from these dealers will be vigorously defended.”

While David Kennedy, research director at Ovum, said: “We believe that growth in new broadband connections has slowed in the last year, so ISPs can no longer count on revenue growth to the same extent that they could in 2006-07,” he said.

Kennedy claimed this will require a new style of management in the industry, with a focus on cost control and growing alternative revenue streams e.g. voice or video.

“These aren’t easy to do, but ISPs not already moving in this direction soon are likely to have problems going forward. There is already a trend towards consolidation in the ISP industry (e.g. AAPT/Powertel/iiNet and Soul/TPG), and this stronger focus on cost will accelerate this trend,” said Kennedy.