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Dot-com shockers and the Grabiner effect

By Graham Hayday

Published: Thursday 25 April 2002

Dot-com shock: eBay's made some money. In fact, the auction site's profits (yes, profits) have doubled over the past year. In its latest quarter, it made $47.6m on revenues of $245.1m.

It obviously relies heavily on the quality of the merchandise its users offer up for auction. So we're not too sure how much this particular item advertised on eBay earlier in the week will raise:

"Digital television provider, barely used, slightly faulty. Complete with all manuals, unsold set-top boxes, customers and debts. Quick sale wanted due to legging it away from all the people we owe money to. Winning bidder pays £178.5m owed to the Football League. Will accept cash only."

Sadly, that's now been taken off the site. But there is still a phalanx of ITV Digital monkeys available (just do a search on 'monkey'). The company's administrators would do well to track down as many of these furry, cuddly simians still in ITV Digital's possession as they can. They may well be its most valuable asset...

While we're on the subject of ITV Digital, a silicon.com reader has asked us to explain what may become known as the Grabiner Effect.

In short, this can be explained as follows. Mike Grabiner was once the chief executive of Energis. He jumped shipped before the proverbial really hit the fan at the telco. His brother Stephen Grabiner was the chief executive of ITV Digital (when it was known as ON Digital), but jumped ship before the proverbial...

Mike now works for a venture capital company, Apax Partners. In a bizarre co-incidence, Stephen works for Apax Partners as well.

And in an even stranger slice of serendipity, Apax is thought to be sniffing round ITV Digital...

(As a footnote, Mr S Grabiner also used to head up Express Newspapers. And look at how well they're doing these days...)

Here's yet another sign of these tough times. Computer Associates is holding its annual CA World conference in Florida at the moment.

Delegates pay $900 to attend the event, but are usually handsomely rewarded with branded bags and assorted 'vendorwear'.

But not this year. Believe it or not, CA is charging $30 for T-shirts displaying the company's logo.

A spokesman told our intrepid reporter on the ground: "The reason we are charging people for the T-shirt this year is to demonstrate its good quality and long-lasting value."

Of course it is...

A DTI employee (who shall remain nameless) forwarded us a message sent round his organisation by a systems administrator. It reads: "It is necessary for urgent work to take place on the Edinburgh server... A tape drive needs to be replaced, therefore the server will be taken down at 17:30 hours tonight, 15/04/02... We apologise for the short notice and any incontinence this may have caused."

Blimey. That must be quite some server...

Tales from 21st century life, number 47. David Sear of WorldPay saw the mention in last week's Round-Up of Vodafone's billing agent SinglePoint (see the original story here http://www.silicon.com/a52720 ), and was prompted to send us this email:

"I had no idea who SinglePoint were until I got a call on my new mobile (bought at a Phones4U store) from a lady saying she was with SinglePoint Solutions, and was employed by Vodafone to bill me. 'Oh,' I said. 'What do you want?'

"'I can't tell you,' she said.

'"Why?' said I, still calm but slightly confused.

"She then said, 'I have to take you through security - what is your full address?'

'"What's yours,' I said... There followed a slightly surreal argument with me trying to point out that she had phoned me, rather than the other way around, and that whereas she knew who I was because she phoned me, I had no idea who she was and therefore had no intention of giving her my home address, telephone number, blood type, etc in order that she could 'take me through security'. I pointed out to her that I couldn't go through her security therefore, for reasons of security.

"It transpired that all she wanted to do was find out if I was on 'the right billing plan'. She then described a plan which was totally different to the one I had signed up to. The direct debit bit hasn't gone through yet. The future's not bright..."

BT announced its new, 'no frills' ADSL package for the second time on Wednesday (http://www.silicon.com/a52900 ). It's not actually available until the autumn, so they'll probably announce it again a bit nearer the time, thereby generating some more good headlines - because it seems that everyone loves BT these days. CEO Ben Verwaayen has achieved mission impossible in his short time at the helm.

Well, nearly everyone... A couple of ISPs are a bit scared that their margins could become as this as a cigarette paper if this no frills thing takes off. And the thorny issue of getting ADSL to the countryside simply won't go away.

BT will not DSL-enable any more exchanges until there is demonstrable demand for it. And why should it? There's no universal access obligation on it to do so, and BT is a commercial organisation.

There are initiatives underway in some 'remote' areas to pool the demand of local businesses, schools, libraries and so on to create this demand. But what if you're not domiciled in such an area? The experience of another silicon.com reader, Harry Grove from Chaddesley Corbett in Worcestershire, is enlightening.

"Having negotiated a slightly unfriendly automated phone menu, he finally got through to a real person within BT to discuss his needs. As his email to us reads, "I was authorised by our local parish council... to make enquiries of BT about ADSL provision in our local exchange... [The problem is that they] can only treat you as a single customer, even though I am an elected representative of the people, and I was trying to obtain enhanced provision on behalf of some 2,000 local people and schools. What did I get told? Everyone, individually, had to register their interest with BT! And how do they do that? They had to log-on to the BT website..."

Anyone see the flaw in that? It does rather assume everyone already has net access. (They don't). Or are prepared to wait for their ancient modems to download the graphics on said website with the all the speed of an arthritic tortoise who's feeling particularly sleepy today. (They're not.)

Daft really, innit?

Til next week...