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Tag: Telstra

  • Telstra expects $2.36b ebitda hit from NBN

    Telstra expects $2.36b ebitda hit from NBN

    Shares in Australia’s Telstra slumped 10.6% to a five-year low of A$3.87 yesterday after the company warned it expects to take an A$3 billion ($2.36 billion) hit to its ebtida as a result of the rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN).

    Telstra cut its planned dividend for the current financial year by 29% to A$0.22 per share after revealing that it expects the impact of the NBN rollout to be at the top end of its projected $2 billion to $3 billion ebitda decline.

    The incumbent operator announced the plan along with its financial results for the 12 months ending in June. Revenue for the year grew 4.3% to A$28.2 billion.

    Net profit fell 33.8% to A$3.9 billion, but excluding the impact of the sale of its Autohome Chinese classifieds business for A$2.1 billion to Ping An Insurance Group in the prior year, profit from continuing operations grew 1.1%.

    Telstra reported mobile net additions of 218,000 and domestic retail fixed broadband net additions of 132,000 during the year. Customers served by Telstra over the NBN meanwhile more than doubled to 1.18 million, representing a total market share of 52% of the non-satellite services over the national wholesale network.

    But Telstra CEO Andrew Penn said the company is facing competitive pressures in both the mobile and fixed segments, including the introduction of new rivals in both.

    “Digital disruption is continuing to accelerate, not just for us but also for our customers, and we are entering a significant point in the transformation of the telecommunications market with the nbn rollout reaching scale,” Telstra CEO Andrew Penn said.
    “It is against the backdrop of these market dynamics that we announced during the year our intention to invest up to A$3 billion over the next three years to achieve a further step change in our strategic positioning to deliver economic benefits of more than A$500 million of ebitda by 2021.”

    Telstra also plans to bring forward its target of achieving A$1 billion in efficiencies by FY21 and seek to deliver more than A$1.5 billion in net productivity gains by FY22.

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  • Telstra’s 4G population coverage hits 99%

    Telstra’s 4G population coverage hits 99%

    Australia’s Telstra has revealed that its 4G network now covers 99% of the nation’s geographically dispersed population.

    Following upgrades in regional areas of Western Australia, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, the company’s 4G network now offers coverage across more than 1.4 million square kilometers, Telstra COO Robyn Denholm said in a blog post.

    Telstra is meanwhile upgrading its transmission network to help meet projected traffic demand. Denholm said only 20% of the projected capacity Telstra will require by 2020 existed at the start of the year.

    To achieve this Telstra is deploying optical transport technology across its transmission network, starting with an upgrade to the cable connecting the island state of Tasmania to the mainland across the Bass Strait. The upgrade will increase the capacity on each of the two cables from 400Gbps to 1Tbps.

    “Importantly, the next generation optical transport technology offers huge upside for supporting growth. With future system deployments we anticipate we can scale up to 100Tbps or more,” Denholm said.

    “We will now be progressively upgrading our optical transport capability around Australia, with Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia the next in line to benefit from from inter-capital upgrades.”

    Finally, Telstra has activated LTE Cat M1 across its 4GX (LTE-Advanced) network footprint, and plans to deploy range extension capability that will take the footprint of the IoT network to more than 3 million square kilometers.

    The company has also commenced testing of software that supports NB-IoT and expects to introduce this capability later this year.

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  • Telstra acquires UK’s Company85

    Telstra acquires UK’s Company85

    Telstra has acquired Company85, a UK-based technology services business and provider of data center, workspace, cloud, security and network services.

    Christopher Smith, executive director of Telstra’s business technology services, said the acquisition was aligned to Telstra’s strategy to grow its technology services business internationally and would significantly enhance Telstra’s service offering for UK and European based business and government customers.

    “Company85’s offering is strongly aligned to the existing suite of technology consulting services we offer our Australian customers, and is consistent with the strategic investments we have made in Australia. Importantly, it aligns with our strategy to grow our services business in regions that are key hubs for multinational corporations,” Smith said. “We see the UK as a key market for our growing technology services business and a strong platform to expand into Europe.”

    Smith also said Company85 was highly regarded in the UK for its consulting and technical expertise, including the market-leading approach it has developed for standardizing and automating data center migrations.

    “Company85’s broad set of consulting capabilities will help us to differentiate our offerings in Europe. We will be able to engage in IT transformation conversations with prospective customers early in the proposal stage, which we believe will help to strengthen our position and create demand for our network services in the region,” Smith said.

    Company85 CEO Adrian Spink said the combination of Telstra’s world class network and global reach, with Company85’s technical expertise and strong relationships with CIOS and Chief Information Security Officers at leading organizations, would create exciting growth opportunities.

    “Being part of Telstra we see a tremendous opportunity to reach new customers and accelerate our international expansion,” Spink said.

  • Telstra to connect 29 stadiums for Fox Sports

    Telstra to connect 29 stadiums for Fox Sports

    Australia’s Telstra has secured a contract to connect 29 sporting stadiums across the country using its nationwide Distributed Production Network end-to-end IP network for cable TV broadcaster Fox Sports.

    Under the long-term contract, Telstra will use the network to connect the stadiums to new Remote Production Hubs in Sydney and Melbourne.

    The deployment is expected to be completed ahead of next year’s National Rugby League and Australian Football League seasons.

    Telstra’s DPN has been custom-built for the media industry to allow customers to remotely produce live broadcasts combining multiple raw camera feeds and audio signals from centralized production hubs.

    According to Telstra Broadcast Services head Trevor Boal, the DPN network will deliver a standard capacity of 100Gbps for each stadium using diverse network paths, and will support the broadcasting of more than 520 live tier sporting events per year.

    “Telstra’s DPN is designed to help our broadcast customers meet the rapidly growing demand for live content by offering access to our high capacity, low latency, multi-tenant network of scale,” he said.

    “In a world first, multiple channels of uncompressed linear contribution video at the lowest possible latency will be traversing our network from sporting venues up to 3500 kilometers away from the Remote Production Hubs.”

    Telstra has already previously integrated its live, point of view miniature wearable camera technology Globecam into Fox Sports’ broadcasts.

  • Telstra lays out plans for Programmable Network

    Telstra lays out plans for Programmable Network

    Australian operator Telstra has outlined its plans to offer SDN and NFV, cloud platform and data centers as well as global and Australian networks in one integrated and intelligent platform.

    At the ITW Conference in Chicago, Telstra outlined its planned network-as-a-service called the Telstra Programmable Network.

    This new network will be programmable at its core and enable the automation and provisioning of services. It will be designed to help businesses quickly add new capabilities to deliver better experiences without significant infrastructure upgrades. It will also allow simple and secure access to multiple cloud services via a simple user interface.

    “The Telstra Programmable Network is designed to help our customers meet the rapidly growing global demand for data and the proliferation of applications, as well as embrace cloud computing by offering flexible and dynamic access to our high bandwidth, low latency and secure networks,” said Jim Fagan, Director Global Platforms.

    “Our vision for the Telstra Programmable Network is to help businesses optimize their IT by offering automated, on-demand and near real-time provisioning, consumption-based pricing and new data insights on network usage,” said Fagan.

    “The Telstra Programmable Network brings together all of our SDN technologies such as PEN, Telstra’s first globally connected on-demand networking platform, and continues their development under one vision, architecture and investment program.”

    International IP-VPN customers will also be able to access the Telstra Programmable Network’s capabilities from any of Telstra’s 2,000 points of presence worldwide after launch. This includes extending their network via Telstra’s portal or API to access the internet and a range of public cloud services including Amazon Web Services and IBM SoftLayer.

    To complement the rollout, Telstra will implement a significant capability upgrade of its core international IP network in the coming months.

    This will introduce increased bandwidth and flexibility, which the new service will demand. In addition, these enhancements are expected to increase Telstra’s peering capacity by up to 70% and provide enhanced security with traffic segregation capability to mitigate DDoS traffic.

    “These initial investments will establish the groundwork for the Telstra Programmable Network with future enhancements, such as orchestrated real-time SD-WAN and security, to be announced in the coming months,” said Fagan.

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  • Telstra launches five new SaaS solutions

    Telstra launches five new SaaS solutions

    Australian operator Telstra is drawing on the investments made through its venture capital arm Telstra Ventures to add five new SaaS solutions for its international enterprise customers.

    The suite of new applications is designed to better help companies as they go through digital transformation by offering solutions that reduce the cost and complexity of utilizing digital applications.

    The new range of applications are designed to improve the way organisations manage interactions with their customers and employees.

    New solutions include Near, a location intelligence platform that provides near real-time information on places, people and products, as well as all-in-one application delivery platform Nginx Plus.

    The new additions to the portfolio also include Panviva, a cloud-based platform that provides real-time process guidance to facilitate staff productivity and reduce human process errors, vArmour, a distributed security system delivering application-aware micro-segmentation, and mobile threat defense platform Zimperium.

    These applications are in addition to DocuSign, Guest Services, Kony, TeleSign and Whispir, which are currently available in the Telstra Applications Portfolio.

    This suite of new applications will be available in select locations in Asia, Europe and North America. Near, Panviva and Zimperium will be available from 30 March, while, Nginx Plus and vArmour will be available in June.

    “Organizations know they need to transform digitally to compete in today’s market, but there are challenges to overcome,” Teltra director of global applications Gianpaolo Carraro said.

    “Recent research commissioned by Telstra found 76% of organisations believed they would be more effective if their technology and network platforms were more flexible and agile, while 67% said their ability to work more collaboratively and effectively is hindered by rigid technology and network platforms.”

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  • Telstra forms SDN alliance with VeloCloud

    Telstra forms SDN alliance with VeloCloud

    Australian operator Telstra has entered a strategic partnership with US-based Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN company VeloCloud to help accelerate the adoption of SDN in enterprise networking.

    The partnership, which includes an investment from Telstra Ventures into VeloCloud, will enhance Telstra’s SDN and NFV capabilities in the APAC region.

    As part of the agreement, Telstra’s Chinese joint venture Telstra PBS will add VeloCloud SD-WAN solutions to its product suite.

    Telstra Ventures managing director Mark Sherman said the investment is consistent with Telstra’s overall network strategy, which reflects the increasing role SDN and NFV are playing in enterprise networking.

    “We expect SDN will continue to transform enterprise networking around the world and VeloCloud SD-WAN can help companies achieve more agile and responsive networks as well as reduce costs,” he said.

    “We are excited about the opportunity to work with VeloCloud on solutions for our enterprise customers, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region where their technology can help businesses manage their networks in dynamic environments across multiple locations. Our first step will be to offer VeloCloud technology to customers in mainland China.”

  • Telstra to launch LTE-Broadcast this year

    Telstra to launch LTE-Broadcast this year

    Telstra has announced plans to launch LTE-Broadcast (LTE-B) services this year, and roll out the technology across Australia by 2018.

    The company is working with network vendor Ericsson to enable LTE-B in existing Telstra Media services this year.

    Telstra also plans to launch a 24×7 linear streaming channel using the technology, initially for certain compatible Samsung devices.

    LTE-B is a dedicated technology for broadcasting media over LTE networks for enhanced mobile video services such as mobile TV broadcasting and live streaming video services. The technology is also known as enhanced broadcast multcast services (eMBMS).

    LTE-B is designed to provide a constant bitrate data channel for broadcast content, with the bitrate not decreasing regardless of how many subscribers are watching simultaneously.

    Telstra group managing director for networks Mike Wright said 99% of Telstra’s 4GX-branded sites are already LTE_B compatible, and the operator aims to achieve nationwide coverage by next year.

    “Telstra’s LTE-B product roadmap will include 24 x 7 linear streaming, live sports coverage beyond stadiums, pre-loading of popular content, news clips and games highlights,” he said. “We plan on enabling LTE-B across many devices, and are excited to deliver an enhanced mobile experience to our customers.”

    In line with these ambitions, Telstra is also adopting technologies including session continuity and dynamic switching, and aims to introduce these capabilities to its network by November 2017.

    Session continuity allows for seamless transitions between unicast and broadcast areas during video streaming. Dynamic switching shifts the transmission between unicast or broadcast depending on which technology will deliver a superior experience based on the current number of simultaneous users.

    “This technology will be crucial to improving the LTE-B experience for our customers. For instance, when network capacity becomes limited and multiple users are consuming the same content, the MooD capability can shift the transmission to broadcast,” he said.

    Telstra and Ericsson are also members of the global LTE-Broadcast Alliance, which is holding its first forum at this week’s Mobile World Congress, the annual mobile industry conference held in Barcelona.

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  • Telstra taps Ericsson for network evolution

    Telstra taps Ericsson for network evolution

    At Mobile World Congress 2017, Australian operator Telstra announced it has selected Ericsson to support its major “Network of the Future” transformation program.

    Ericsson will supply equipment and services to support the program, which includes a nationwide optical network transformation and expansion.

    The program will also include 5G new radio (NR) trials, the creation of a new Media Delivery Cloud to complement Telstra’s Telco Cloud project and deployment of CAT M1 functionality nationwide to establish Australia’s largest IoT network.

    Under the agreement, Ericsson will deliver a three-year optical transmission network and rollout plan to expand Telstra’s long haul, metro and regional optical networks, supplying and installing converged packet-optical technologies from Ciena.

    Ericsson, Telstra and Qualcomm will meanwhile collaborate on interoperability testing and an over-the-air field trial based on the 3GPP’s expected 5G NR specifications. Telstra is also a member of the group pushing for accelerated 5G NR standardization

    For the IoT initiative, Telstra and Ericsson have now commenced localized CAT-M1 trials in Melbourne and Tasmania in the first stage of a deployment across Telstra’s 4G network, which covers over 98% of Australia’s population.

    “These projects… provide the foundation for Telstra’s Network of the Future program, which is essential to delivering our customers a brilliantly connected future,” Telstra group managing director for networks Mike Wright commented.

    “Our expanded optical network will support important emerging network capabilities such as IoT, 5G and enhanced media delivery. And our move to virtualization through the Telco and Media Cloud projects will enable us to deliver our customers unique and differentiated services to meet their personal and business needs.”

    Telstra said its Telco Cloud network is now delivering live traffic. Telstra first announced its network function virtualization infrastructure (NFVi) program at last year’s Mobile World Congress and the company has now compled the first video call over a virtualized EPG.

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  • Telstra 1H profit falls 14.4% to $1.38b

    Telstra 1H profit falls 14.4% to $1.38b

    Australia’s largest operator Telstra has reported a 14.4% decline in net profit for the first half of its financial year to A$1.79 billion ($1.38 billion), as the company dealt with an increasingly competitive market.

    Revenue for the six months ended in December fell 6.4% to A$12.8 billion, with fixed line revenue down 4.7% to A$3.3 billion and mobile revenue falling 8.7% to A$5 billion.

    Telstra added 200,000 new mobile subscribers, including 79,000 postpaid customers. Postpaid ARPU declined 2.6% but is showing signs of stabilizing, the operator said.

    On the fixed line side, Telstra acts as one of numerous retail resellers of services over the national broadband network (NBN). Telstra’s NBN customers grew by 292,000 to 792,000 giving the company a market share – excluding the small number of customers serviced by the NBN’s satellite service – of around 51%.

    Network applications and services revenue meanwhile grew 18% to A$1.5 billion due to higher revenue from cloud services as well as services provided to industry, including Telstra’s share of revenue from NBN commercial works.

    Telstra CEO Andrew Penn said the results indicate that the company performed relatively well in a tightly competitive environment.

    “It is significant that we were able to increase subscriber numbers in mobiles and retail fixed plans despite the increased competition,” he said.

    “We have a clear strategy to differentiate our products through the speed, coverage and reliability of our networks, innovative product design and new customer experiences, including access to media content. We are committed to improve the experience we provide our customers and as announced last year, we are investing up to $3 billion incremental capital expenditure in networks for the future and digitisation of the business.”

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  • Hugo Barra leaves Xiaomi to join Facebook

    Hugo Barra leaves Xiaomi to join Facebook

    Hugo Barra, the international head at Xiaomi, is returning to Silicon Valley to head Facebook’s VR efforts, after spending three and half years in Beijing leading the Chinese smartphone maker’s global division.

    The announcement was made by Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg via his Facebook page last Wednesday.

    “I’m excited that Hugo Barra is joining Facebook to lead all of our virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team,” Zuckerberg said in an announcement made in virtual reality.

    Barra will spearhead virtual reality efforts as Facebook’s VP of virtual reality. His relationship with Zuckerberg goes back years to when he broke ground on the Android operating system.

    More recently he worked at Xiaomi’s Beijing office as VP of International, serving as the face of the company and taking active part in product launches. Barra joined Xiaomi in 2013 from Google, where he worked as head of product management for Android, to oversee the company’s international expansion.

    Barra’s appointment comes over a month and a half after former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe stepped down from his position in order to assume a leadership position within the company’s VR group.

    Telstra’s Cynthia Whelan to chair Foxtel

    Telstra has appointed group executive of new businesses Cynthia Whelan as the new chairman of Foxtel, the Australian incumbent’s 50/50 pay-TV joint venture with News Corporation.

    Whelan replaces Robert Nason, who retired from Telstra in 2015 and has been Foxtel chairman since June 2012. She has been a member of the Foxtel board since September last year.

    “Cynthia Whelan is an ideal chairman for Foxtel and will provide suitable leadership for the organization as it navigates a period of intense competition and technological evolution. She has significant experience in Australia and overseas in senior management and director roles,” Telstra CEO Andrew Penn said.

    Telstra’s partnership with News Corp over Foxtel allows Telstra to appoint the pay-TV firm’s chairman, while News Corp has the management control.

    Whelan will assume her new role on February 17. Telstra CFO Warwick Bray is also on the Foxtel board and the company will soon appointed a third director to replace Nason, the telco said in a statement.

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  • Telstra launches Gigabit LTE in key CBDs

    Telstra launches Gigabit LTE in key CBDs

    Australia’s Telstra has launched the world’s first commercial Gigabit LTE network in the central business districts of key state capital cities.

    The operator’s LTE-A network in these CBDs has been upgraded to support 4X4 multiple input multiple output (MIMO), three carrier aggregation and 256 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) on the downlink.

    The network also supports 64QAM and two carrier aggregation on the uplink for a peak upload speed of 150Mbps.

    Telstra, Ericsson, Qualcomm and Netgear jointly developed the first Gigabit-class commercially ready LTE network and Gigabit-class mobile device in October.

    Netgear’s Gigabit LTE device, the Nighthawk M1, will launch in Australia late this month, which will allow customers to use the Gigabit LTE service. The Nighthawk M1 utilizes 4×4 MIMO to support 4-way receive diversity.

    “Gigabit LTE is also an important step on our journey to 5G and demonstrates Telstra’s commitment to delivering Australians a world class network now and into the future,” Telstra group managing director for networks Mike Wright said.

    “We are well placed to evolve our 4G network and are putting the building blocks in place for Australia to be ready for 5G – this will deliver more bandwidth and lower latencies which are critical for emerging applications such as downloading 4K video, IoT, autonomous vehicles, augmented reality and shared virtual reality.”

  • Telstra, Ericsson demo 10G intercontinental encryption

    Telstra, Ericsson demo 10G intercontinental encryption

    Australia’s Telstra and Ericsson have separately demonstrated secure end-to-end encryption over  10Gbps intercontinental link.

    The companies encrypted data in transit at 10Gbps between Los Angeles and Melbourne, Australia using Ciena’s ultra-low latency 10G wire-speed encryption technology.

    The companies said the trial demonstrates that data can be encrypted in transit – beyond the walls of a data center – at high speeds without any impact to performance.

    “The outcome of this test shows that data can now be encrypted while in transit across a long distance, while maintaining the speed and reliability our customers have come to expect from our international network,” Telstra executive director of international operations and services Darrin Webb said.

    “We will continue to work with Ericsson and Ciena to take this trial to the next level with a 100Gbps encryption test.”

    “This time last year Telstra and Ericsson achieved an encryption trial between Melbourne and Sydney. We have now extended the distance from Melbourne to Los Angeles with data in transit encryption at 10Gbps, which is the typical speed used today over these distances without encryption,” Ericsson head of customer unit Australia and New Zealand Emilio Romeo added.

    Ericsson and Telstra next plan to demonstrate 100Gbps encryption over the same intercontinental route in the first half of the year.

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  • Telstra debuts assured availability on two APAC links

    Telstra debuts assured availability on two APAC links

    Australia’s Telstra will introduce assured availability on two of Asia-Pacific’s busiest subsea cable routes,  Hong Kong to Singapore and Japan to Hong Kong.

    The company announced its new Always On service guarantee at the Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) conference in Hawaii on Monday.

    Telstra will use its significant APAC cable network to guarantee connectivity in the event of a cable cut or damage due to natural disasters. Telstra’s subsea cable network accounts for up to 30% of active intra-regional capacity in Asia-Pacific.

    Customers will be guaranteed connectivity for their subscribed bandwidth over one primary path and two protection paths through different cable systems along the same routes.

    Telstra’s executive director of global sales Ellie Sweeney said subsea cable damage can take weeks – or in extreme cases months – to fix.

    “With Telstra’s Always On service guarantee, customers will be rerouted to a protection path within a matter of hours initially and with automation we expect to bring this down to a few minutes in the future,” she said.

    “Connectivity is vital to the modern economy, with many consumers and businesses now relying on being able to connect anywhere at any time. Meeting customers’ expectations can be difficult when it comes to international connectivity, with cables at risk of service disruptions due to cable cuts caused by boats, earthquakes and typhoons.”

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  • Telstra excluded from Australian 700-MHz auction

    Telstra excluded from Australian 700-MHz auction

    The Australian government will exclude the market’s largest operator Telstra from taking part in a digital dividend auction of 700-MHz spectrum, on the advice of telecoms regulator ACMA.

    ACMA held that because Telstra already owns more than 50% of available low-band spectrum, a victory in the auction would only increase its dominance.

    Communications minister Mitch Fifield has instructed ACMA to set a reserve price for the auction of $1.25 ($0.93) per MHz per head of population covered.

    The terms of the auction will stipulate that no operator can own more than two 20 MHz blocks of spectrum in the 700 MHz band.

    Setting such a cap could allow both Telstra rivals Optus and Vodafone Australia to secure more spectrum to compete against the incumbent. If major fixed line operator TPG chooses to participate the operator would also be better positioned to roll out a fourth 4G network in Australia.

    TPG spent A$13.5 million ($10 million) for 2×10 MHz of 2.5-GHz spectrum in 2013. The operator also recently won the auction to become Singapore’s fourth mobile network operator after securing 60 MHz of 4G spectrum.

    The digital dividend auction will involve 2×15 MHz of the 700-MHz spectrum freed up from the migration from analog to digital broadcasting, but left unsold during the initial digital dividend auction in 2013.