Originally a dealer of Telstra Mobile, Crazy John’s is now a Mobile Virtual Network Operator through the Vodafone network, dealing directly with customers and offering its own competitive mobile phone deals and plans.

History
Crazy John’s opened its first store in Brunswick, Victoria, in 1991. By 1998, there were fifteen store locations in Victoria, and the retailer was ranked in the top ten of Telstra’s mobile dealers. In 2005, the Crazy John’s Training College was established in partnership with Holmesglen Institute of TAFE to provide staff with accreditation in the industry. It is company policy[citation needed] that all long-term employees are offered a place in the 12/24 month long (Certificate II in retail or a diploma in retail management) programs and that staff should earn a nationally-recognised qualification, from both Holmesglen and Crazy John’s.

The name Crazy John’s came about through people constantly telling Ilhan his marketing ideas were “crazy”, and the name stuck. Crazy John’s came to prominence when it was the first company in Australia to offer $1 mobile phones.

Crazy John’s currently serves 500,000 customers across Australia.

Telstra legal disputes and defection
Crazy John’s was originally a dealer for Telstra Mobile, Australia’s largest mobile telecommunications provider, with 500,000 customers providing close to 10 percent of Telstra’s mobile revenue.

In 2003, Telstra sent a letter by facsimile to Crazy John’s demanding payment of $A21,283,642.61 it said was for the overpayment of trailing commissions, a percent of customers’ phone bills. In the letter, Telstra hinted that, if the demand was not paid for, its contract as a Telstra dealer could be adversely affected. Crazy John’s paid the $21 million, and immediately filed suit to demand it be refunded. Crazy John’s claimed that Telstra’s accounting system, MICA (Mobile Integrated Customer Accounts), used to bill its 8 million subscribers, was not able to provide the information required to produce an accurate bill and, therefore, support their payback demand.

Industry analysts believed that Telstra may have been wanting Crazy John’s to take a cut to its trailing commission, suggesting that Telstra believed Crazy John’s could not make the payment, and it might be willing to renegotiate its commission percentage in lieu. However, Crazy John’s was able to make the payment, and the situation reversed: instead of financially forcing the dealer to negotiate, Telstra was in a position of being sued and required to justify its $21 million demand, which Crazy John’s believed it could not do.

In May 2005, Telstra issued a second, $12 million demand, again for more alleged overpaid trailing commissions. Crazy John’s applied for an injunction in the Federal Court in Melbourne to prevent Telstra from going ahead with this second demand. This was dismissed by Justice Mark Weinberg, Crazy John’s paid the amount, and rolled the figure into its original refund demand, bringing the total to $33 million.

At the same time, company founder John Ilhan announced his intention to dump Telstra in 2007 when its contract expired, and instead would buy its own airtime from a wholesale source and serve customers directly, rather than passing them on to Telstra. Ilhan said he was “fed up with Telstra’s bullying” and that it “isn’t competitive any longer”. Telstra, on the other hand, began threatening to not renew the exclusive reseller agreement it had with Crazy John’s when it ended on 1 July 2007, if didn’t agree to new terms that included less commission per customer. Telstra did just that, giving the required two years notice in July 2005.

After announcing his intention to defect from Telstra at the end of its contract, Telstra created a new company, BQ Communications, to compete against Crazy John’s. In affidavits lodged in the Supreme Court of Victoria, Crazy John’s claimed that Telstra was poaching Crazy John’s staff to start up the company – including Bill Asermakidis, the former national sales manager – and “raping” its customer database by taking price lists and the names of customers. Telstra denied many of the claims made in the affidavits, but not the new company.

On 1 July 2007, Crazy John’s made the transition towards becoming a Mobile Virtual Network Operator through the Vodafone network. The deal allowed Crazy John’s to deal directly with mobile phone handset manufacturers and offer its own competitive mobile phone plans. Just days before the switch to Vodafone, Telstra sought a court injunction to prevent Crazy John’s from using confidential information in contacting Telstra’s customers to sign them up to new contracts. Crazy John’s agreed to limit the amount of customer information it can use after its contract ended.

Marketing and sponsorship
Crazy John’s is the major sponsor of the South Dragons in the NBL.
Crazy John’s is the major sponsor of the Collingwood Magpies VFL team.
Crazy John’s also sponsors Richmond Tigers.
In 2003, Crazy John’s bid for the naming rights to Subiaco Oval, in Perth, Western Australia, but soon lost it due to community action

The first satellite equipped with on-board radio-transmitter that worked on two frequences, 20.005 and 40.002 MHz was the Soviet Sputnik 1, launched in 1957. The first American satellite to relay communications was Project SCORE in 1958, which used a tape recorder to store and forward voice messages. It was used to send a Christmas greeting to the world from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. NASA launched an Echo satellite in 1960; the 100-foot aluminized PET film balloon served as a passive reflector for radio communications. Courier 1B, (built by Philco) also launched in 1960, was the world’s first active repeater satellite.

Telstar was the first active, direct relay communications satellite. Belonging to AT&T as part of a multi-national agreement between AT&T, Bell Telephone Laboratories, NASA, the British General Post Office, and the French National PTT (Post Office) to develop satellite communication, it was launched by NASA from Cape Canaveral on July 10, 1962, the first privately sponsored space launch. Telstar was placed in an elliptical orbit (completed once every 2 hours and 37 minutes), rotating at a 45° angle above the equator.

An immediate antecedent of the geostationary satellites was Hughes’ Syncom 2, launched on July 26, 1963. Syncom 2 revolved around the earth once per day at constant speed, but because it still had north-south motion, special equipment was needed to track it.

Geostationary orbits

Geostationary orbit

A satellite in a geostationary orbit appears to be in a fixed position to an earth-based observer. A geostationary satellite revolves around the earth at a constant speed once per day over the equator.

The geostationary orbit is useful for communications applications because ground based antennas, which must be directed toward the satellite, can operate effectively without the need for expensive equipment to track the satellite’s motion. Especially for applications that require a large number of ground antennas (such as direct TV distribution), the savings in ground equipment can more than justify the extra cost and onboard complexity of lifting a satellite into the relatively high geostationary orbit.

The concept of the geostationary communications satellite was first proposed by Arthur C. Clarke, building on work by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and on the 1929 work by Herman Potočnik (writing as Herman Noordung) Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums - der Raketen-motor. In October 1945 Clarke published an article titled “Extra-terrestrial Relays” in the British magazine Wireless World. The article described the fundamentals behind the deployment of artificial satellites in geostationary orbits for the purpose of relaying radio signals. Thus Arthur C. Clarke is often quoted as being the inventor of the communications satellite.

The first truly geostationary satellite launched in orbit was the Syncom 3, launched on August 19, 1964. It was placed in orbit at 180° east longitude, over the International Date Line. It was used that same year to relay experimental television coverage on the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan to the United States, the first television transmission sent over the Pacific Ocean.

Shortly after Syncom 3, Intelsat I, aka Early Bird, was launched on April 6, 1965 and placed in orbit at 28° west longitude. It was the first geostationary satellite for telecommunications over the Atlantic Ocean.

On November 9, 1972, North America’s first geostationary satellite serving the continent, Anik A1, was launched by Telesat Canada, with the United States following suit with the launch of Westar 1 by Western Union on April 13, 1974.

On December 19, 1974, the first geostationary communications satellite in the world to be three-axis stabilized was launched: the Franco-German Symphonie.

After the launchings of Telstar, Syncom 3, Early Bird, Anik A1, and Westar 1, RCA Americom (later GE Americom, now SES Americom) launched Satcom 1 in 1975. It was Satcom 1 that was instrumental in helping early cable TV channels such as WTBS (now TBS Superstation), HBO, CBN (now ABC Family), and The Weather Channel become successful, because these channels distributed their programming to all of the local cable TV headends using the satellite. Additionally, it was the first satellite used by broadcast television networks in the United States, like ABC, NBC, and CBS, to distribute their programming their local affiliate stations. Satcom 1 was so widely used because it had twice the communications capacity of the competing Westar 1 in America (24 transponders as opposed to the 12 of Westar 1), resulting in lower transponder-usage costs. Satellites in later decades tended to have even higher transponder numbers.

By 2000 Hughes Space and Communications (now Boeing Satellite Development Center) had built nearly 40 percent of the satellites in service worldwide. Other major satellite manufacturers include Space Systems/Loral, Lockheed Martin (owns former RCA Astro Electronics/GE Astro Space business), Northrop Grumman, Alcatel Space, now Thales Alenia Space, with the Spacebus series, and EADS Astrium.

Nokia Siemens, together with Panasonic Mobile Communications, is also providing radio technology for NTT DoCoMo’s Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network.