Case Study

The Activation Trap: How a Telstra Partner Turned One Farm’s Fleet Into a $20K/Month Waste Machine

Your partner only gets paid when you buy more. So who is watching what you already have? Book a Meeting and we will show you what your current partner is not.

The Switch

Eighteen months ago, an Australian agricultural business with over 1,250 connected devices moved their telco management to a Telstra partner. The pitch was familiar: better rates, dedicated account management, and a single point of contact for everything.

What the client did not fully understand was the partner’s commercial model: they only get paid on new service activations.

That detail changes everything.

What We Found

Telco Management still reviews this client’s billing data. Not because they pay us to, but because it is how we identify re-engagement opportunities and demonstrate what happens when governance disappears. Their latest invoice tells a brutal story:

Metric	Figure
Devices with zero data usage in last 3 months	518
Monthly cost of those unused devices	~$20,000
New activations (recent period)	84
Deactivations (same period)	19
Activation-to-deactivation ratio	4.4 : 1

The Numbers in Context

The fleet’s top ten device manufacturers alone represent a monthly spend exceeding $55,000. Of that, devices reporting absolutely no data usage still appear on the invoice — month after month — to the tune of roughly $20,000.

That is not a rounding error. That is 36 percent of the visible device spend going to hardware that is not being used.

The Device Breakdown (No Usage, Last 3 Months)

Make	Devices with Zero Usage	Monthly Cost
Apple	171	$7,727
Samsung	155	$6,720
Unknown	49	$593
ZTE	36	$1,155
Telit	33	$1,330
Quectel	30	$1,065
Sierra Wireless	17	$577
Huawei	13	$182
3FeetSolutions	12	$668
Netgear	12	$201

The most damning figure is the ratio of 84 activations to 19 deactivations. For every device removed from the fleet, four new ones were added. This is not organic growth. This is what happens when your partner’s paycheck depends on selling more — not on governing what you already own.

Why This Happens: The Incentive Gap

This is not a story about a negligent client or a bad partner. It is a story about misaligned incentives.

A partner who only earns commission on activations has a clear commercial imperative: sell more services. There is no financial reason for them to:

– Audit your existing fleet for unused lines
– Cancel orphan devices that are still billing
– Flag zero-usage hardware that should be decommissioned
– Reconcile your invoice against your actual workforce
– Dispute billing errors that cost you money

Why would they? None of those activities generate revenue for them.

Carriers and their partners are not incentivised to save you money. Their job is to provide service, send invoices, and grow account value. Governance is not their business model. Governance is yours.

When the agricultural business moved to this partner, they gained a salesperson. What they lost was a governor.

The Drift

Telecommunications environments are living things. Staff turnover, seasonal hiring, equipment upgrades, and site changes all add and remove services constantly. Without a monthly reconciliation process — someone checking every active line against a current employee or asset register — the default state is drift.

But drift accelerates when your partner is actively adding services and has no reason to remove them. The 4.4:1 activation ratio is not an accident. It is a predictable outcome of a commission-only model. Every new connection is a win for the partner. Every dead line left billing is silently paid by you.

Consider what $20,000 per month in avoidable waste becomes over time:

– 3 months: $60,000
– 6 months: $120,000
– 12 months: $240,000
– 18 months (current): $360,000

That is the cost of assuming your partner is managing your spend. They are managing their revenue. Those are not the same thing.

Who is watching your bill if your partner only gets paid when it grows? Book a Meeting and we will audit your latest invoice — with whoever you currently use.

What a TEM Engagement Would Have Prevented

An active TEM engagement — one that is not tied to service sales but to spend governance — would have caught every one of these signals:

1. Monthly zero-usage flagging. Any device with no data consumption for 60 days triggers an automatic review. Is it seasonal? Faulty? Orphaned? Someone asks the question.

2. Activation-to-deactivation monitoring. A 4.4:1 ratio would have raised an immediate alert. The partner may not care. TEM does.

3. Fleet profiling by manufacturer and function. A spike in “unknown” or mismatched device types indicates ad-hoc procurement outside policy — often driven by a partner who benefits from every activation.

4. Quarterly business reviews. A structured check-in with finance and operations to reconcile headcount, site count, and service count. The partner does not get invited because they are a vendor. TEM is the independent check.

None of this requires switching carriers. None of it requires firing your partner. It requires someone whose incentive is aligned with your savings, not your spending.

The Lesson: Carrier-Agnostic, Incentive-Aligned

Telco Management is carrier-agnostic not because we do not supply services — we do. But because our core engagement is TEM, and TEM only works if the governance is independent of the sales.

A partner who sells connectivity and also audits your bill has a conflict of interest. We do not. We audit what you have, with whoever you use, and we get paid to find savings — not to sell you more.

The agricultural business thought they were getting a better deal with a dedicated partner. What they actually got was a sales channel with no brake pedal. The result is on their invoice every month.

Could This Be You?

Ask yourself these questions about your current partner or carrier account manager:

– Do they make more money when your bill goes up or when it goes down?
– Have they ever proactively identified unused services on your invoice?
– When was the last time they initiated a decommissioning — not a sale?
– Can they show you a monthly report that flags zero-usage devices?
– Is your activation-to-deactivation ratio balanced, or does your fleet keep growing without explanation?

If your partner’s commercial model rewards growth, they are not your governance layer. They are your vendor. Governance has to come from somewhere else.

Find the waste your partner is not looking for. Book a Meeting and we will audit your latest bill — no switching, no disruption, no obligation.

—