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Tag: Telstra

  • Telstra invests in security company vArmour

    Telstra invests in security company vArmour

    Australian operator Telstra has formed a partnership with – and made an investment in – data center and cloud security company vArmour.

    Under the agreement, investment arm Telstra Ventures has participated in vArmour’s recent $41 million Series D funding round.

    Telstra will also add vArmour’s security offerings to its portfolio of enterprise services. In the long term, the operator said it will also be able to develop security consulting and managed services for its customers.

    The vArmour platform is designed to give organizations application-layer control over their networks to help stave off, detect and respond to cyber threats.

    Jeremy Howe, Telstra’s director of IP Data and Security Solutions, commented that the acquisition is aimed at addressing its enterprise customers’ evolving security demands.

    “We see a growing demand among enterprise customers for solutions that help them secure their data in a private, public and hybrid cloud mix. One of the main concerns companies have in embracing cloud services is data control and security,” he said.

    “vArmour’s distributed security software addresses the problem of traffic blindspots inside data centers. This helps businesses protect themselves from one of the critical emerging threats in the security environment, in addition to the benefits of having greater visibility of what is going on with your data.”

  • Telstra hit with two more outages

    Telstra hit with two more outages

    Australian operator Telstra has been hit with two more network outages in the span of three days, weeks after committing to invest to improve its network resilience.

    On Friday, Telstra confirmed it was aware of an unplanned service disruption affecting NBN voice and data as well as ADSL customers.

    Telstra said the issue its engineers have identified is “extremely complex, but in simple terms there was a fault with the device that manages the interaction between our network and all of the different types of customer modems.”

    While the bulk of restoration efforts occurred two and a half hours after the company announced the incident, it took until late Sunday afternoon to resolve residual issues and fully restore services.

    But on Sunday customers were reporting another outage affecting Telstra’s mobile and broadband networks in Sydney, Melbourne,Brisbane and Perth.

    Some customers reporting issues may still have been affected by the residual problems from the Friday outage, the report states. But the mobile outage, which affected data services for some customers, appears unrelated.

    Telstra has been struggling with a spate of network outages over the past few months. The operator recently committed A$50 million ($36.2 million) towards addressing the issue by installing new monitoring equipment and improving its capacity to handle numerous simultaneous re-registrations.

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  • Telstra spending big to expand intra-Asia capacity

    Telstra spending big to expand intra-Asia capacity

    Australia’s Telstra has announced a series of investments and new network services for the APAC region to help meet soaring demand for data among consumers and businesses.

    The operator has interconnected its networks with the new Bay of Bengal Gateway subsea cable – an 8,000km, three fiber pair system connecting Singapore, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Oman and the UAE – to offer customers direct connectivity between Asia and the Middle East.

    Telstra has also secured capacity on the new trans-Pacific FASTER cable system linking Japan and nearby countries with major hubs on the US west coast.

    In addition, Telstra is investing to enhance the EAC-C2C system to extend the life of the cable to at least 2035. The EAC-C2C is a more than 36,000km cable connecting Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Singapore.

    The EAC was owned and operated by Pacnet, which Telstra acquired for $697 million in 2015.

    Telstra is also building a new overlaid fiber route between Taipei in Taiwan and Hong Kong that will bypass the notoriously natural disaster prone Luzon Strait, as well as a fiber ring network in South Korea that will interconnect its PoPs and cable landing stations in the country.

    “We already own and operate the largest intra-Asia subsea network, representing around 30% of total active capacity,” Telstra managing director Darrin Webb commented.

    “These enhancements further extend our capacity and will support the provision of our leading technologies, such as Telstra’s PEN software-defined networking and cloud, security and unified communications services.”

  • Telstra commits $38m to address mobile outages

    Telstra commits $38m to address mobile outages

    Australia’s largest operator Telstra has committed A$50 million ($38.3 million) towards improving its network resiliency following a spate of outages, but coverage of its announcement was tainted by another minor outage.

    At an investor presentation in Melbourne, Telstra COO Kate McKenzie revealed that the operator has completed a review into the recent mobile network disruptions.

    The review identified a range of steps to reduce the likelihood of another outage, including increasing redundancy, adding more capacity to the core network, introducing new procedures for key network element restarts and improving resilience in international connectivity.

    In response, Telstra will spend around A$25 million installing real time traffic monitoring and customer impact monitoring equipment.

    The remaining A$25 million will be spent increasing the network’s capacity to handle a large number of re-registrations occurring simultaneously after a disruption.

    “What this means is that in the event of a disconnection, a much larger number of customers will be able to re-register at the same time so any disruption to services will be of a much shorter duration,” she said.

    The review was conducted by Telstra’s specialist teams, experts from Ericsson, Juniper and Cisco, and independent advisor Dave Williams from Tech Mahindra. It follows a series of mobile network outages in a short period with various causes.

    Unfortunately for Telstra, local media coverage of Telstra’s investment announcement has concentrated on the fact that hundreds of Telstra customers were reporting outages affecting mainly internet access just hours after the announcement was made.

    According to the company, the outage affected ADSL broadband in Queensland, lasted less that half an hour and was unconnected to the recent mobile network outages, but this did not stop subscribers from commenting about the irony on social media.

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  • Telstra to launch Cloud Gateway in June

    Telstra to launch Cloud Gateway in June

    Australia’s largest operator Telstra will launch a product for businesses needing to connect to multiple cloud environments.

    The company has also added Amazon Web Services (AWS) to its list of supported cloud platforms. The service, named Cloud Gateway, will launch in June 2016.

    Cloud Gateway aims to provide private and secure connectivity directly into multiple public cloud platforms. This one-to-many “gateway” model connects an IP network service to the cloud with data carriage, cross connect in the hosting data center, configuration and support.

    Organizations are expected to be able to access their chosen cloud platform from around the world simply and securely, with increased application performance via Telstra’s IP network.

    Initially, Cloud Gateway will offer customers around the world connectivity to AWS and IBM SoftLayer, while Australian customers can also connect to Microsoft Azure, Office365 and VMware vCloud Air. More infrastructure and SaaS platforms are expected to join over time.

    Telstra executive director for global products and solutions Philip Jones said Cloud Gateway aims to help customers take full advantage of multiple cloud-based workloads.

    “Most organizations don’t realize the full value of cloud out of a single service. Instead, our customers are investing in sophisticated hybrid cloud environments, which come with their own range of fragmented networking challenges,” said Jones.

    “These include managing multiple vendors, portals and contracts, while trying to maintain a high level of security, performance and operational efficiency. We believe that just because these solutions are sophisticated, doesn’t mean that they should also be complex. Cloud Gateway is Telstra’s simple way to connect multiple clouds, and create hybrid environments.”

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  • Telstra conducting network review after outages

    Telstra conducting network review after outages

    Australia’s Telstra and vendor partners Ericsson, Cisco and Juniper have assembled a team of engineering experts to conduct an end-to-end review of its network after the company experienced three mobile network outages in two months.

    During a recent speech at the CommsDay summit, Telstra Operations COO Kate McKenzie said the company has already implemented changes based on reviews of the network to increase the capacity and path diversity of critical signaling channels.

    The company also plans to shortly augment the capacity of the HLR front end that managers customers’ subscription data.

    While the review is underway, Telstra Operations is working under a heightened awareness plan including requiring executive-level review of any changes planned for the mobile and core IP networks.

    “Our network is resilient and we are determined to get the best advice from around the world to help ensure that it stays that way. Our focus is on ensuring our network is the best available and rebuilding our customers’ trust by meeting their expectations every day,” McKenzie said.

    Telstra has offered its customers two separate free data days as compensation for the outages, including one last Sunday. McKenzie revealed that its mobile customers consumed 2.68Tb of data by the end of the day, three times the amount downloaded on a normal weekday and 46% downloaded during the last free data day in February.

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  • Telstra, Singtel agree to build Perth-Singapore cable

    Telstra, Singtel agree to build Perth-Singapore cable

    Singtel, Australia’s Telstra and SubPartners have jointly entered an agreement to build a new subsea cable linking Australia and Singapore.

    The new APX-West cable will run between Perth on the west coast of Australia to Singapore. The two fiber pair cable will have a minimum design capacity of 10Tbps.

    Construction of the 4,500km cable is expected to commence at the end of July and scheduled for completion in 2018.

    APX-West will serve as an alternative to the SEA-ME-WE 3, the current data bridge between Signapore and Perth, and will help expand data connectivity and capacity between Singapore and Australia.

    “The APX-West cable will be a new data superhighway to expand data connectivity and capacity between Singapore and Australia, providing network redundancy and the lowest latency from Australia to Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe,” Singtel group enterprise VP for carrier services Ooi Seng Keat said.

    “With these capabilities, the Singtel Group, including Optus, can meet customers’ growing data requirements for bandwidth-intensive applications such as unified communications, enterprise data exchange, internet TV and online gaming.”

    Telstra is Australia’s largest operator by revenue, and Singtel operates Optus, Telstra’s main rival.

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  • Telstra announces new head of retail

    Telstra announces new head of retail

    One of Australia’s most senior telecommunications executives, Kevin Russell, will join Telstra this month as Group Executive Telstra Retail. In this new role, he will lead the company’s consumer, business, stores and product functions.

    Russell replaces Karsten Wildberger, who resigned last December to return to Europe.

    Wildberger left Telstra on March 31, and short term arrangements are in place until Russell commences in late April.

    Russell, 49, has a wealth of telecom and technology experience in Australia, US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

    He has held executive roles for SingTel Optus, most recently as Country Chief Officer and CEO Consumer, Australia, as well as senior positions at Hutchison Whampoa Group in Australia and internationally.

    Telstra CEO Andrew Penn said Russell would bring substantial expertise to the retail role at an important time for Telstra. Russell will report directly to Penn.

    “We are looking forward to welcoming Kevin to the Telstra leadership team. He has an impressive track record working for several of the world’s largest telcos in a range of demanding markets,” Penn said in a statement.

    “He has passionately worked to build customer experiences in new and existing major consumer brands and service business clients. He has managed major programs across national fixed and mobile networks and is well regarded in the local technology community.”

    Russell was with SingTel Optus from January 2012 to March 2014, holding the positions of COO, CEO Consumer, Australia then the combined role of Country Chief Officer and CEO Consumer, Australia.

    He is currently CEO for a Silicon Valley-based technology start-up.

    Meanwhile Telstra has also appointed controversial former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop to the newly created role of group executive for technology, innovation and strategy.

    Ken Hu appointed Huawei CEO

    Huawei deputy chairman Ken Hu (pictured) will become the company’s acting CEO from April 1 to September 30, in accordance with the company’s Rotating CEO system.

    The rotating CEO acts as the primary person in charge of the company’s operations and crisis management during his tenure and is responsible for convening and chairing the meetings of board of directors’ executive committee and the company’s executive management team, Huawei said in a statement.

    Hu is a member of Huawei’s board of directors and executive management team (EMT) and is also chairman of Huawei USA.

    As part of his role as deputy chairman, Hu is head of Huawei’s human resources committee and is responsible for the company’s leadership and organizational development. He is also the head of the company’s global cyber security committee which oversees the development of Huawei’s global cyber security strategies and the establishment of an end-to-end cyber security assurance system.

    With 20 years of experience in the telecoms industry, Hu is integral to the strategic direction of the company and instrumental to Huawei’s efforts to expand its business in the global markets. He joined Huawei in 1990.

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  • Telstra to plans another free data day after outage

    Telstra to plans another free data day after outage

    Australia’s largest operator Telstra will offer customers another free data day as an apology for its third mobile network outage in less than a month.

    Telstra CEO Andy Penn said he is “deeply disappointed” and acknowledged that multiple outages in such a short period is “absolutely unacceptable.

    The outage took place on Thursday, and was caused by a large number of customers who were disconnected due to an international connectivity issue all reconnecting at once.

    An estimated 8 million subscribers were affected, or around half of Telstra’s total mobile customer base.

    While services were restored for most customers within two hours, the company was still responding to customer complaints over Twitter as of Friday with a message that the company was progressively restoring mobile services, the report notes.

    The disruption followed another outage affecting millions of customers  – which led the operator to offer customers a free data day by way of an apology – and another affecting around 500,000 pre-paid customers earlier this month.

    Also last week, Telstra announced it has appointed former Nokia CEO Stephen Elopto the newly created role of group executive for technology, innovation and strategy.

    In his new role Elop will help Telstra meet its ambitions of becoming a world-class technology company, Penn said in a statement.

    “Stephen will immediately add major firepower to our team with his extensive and deep technology experience and an innate sense of customer expectations. He is a recognized international technology leader and strategist from across a range of global organizations,” he said.

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  • Telstra retail boss resigns after short stint in the job

    Telstra retail boss resigns after short stint in the job

    Telstra head of retail Karsten Wildberger has resigned after less than two months in the job.

    Wildberger is leaving the telco for ‘personal reasons’ and will return to Germany around the middle of next year to take up an executive role outside the telecommunications industry.

    Wildberger was appointed to the retail role when Telstra undertook a management reshuffle after of the resignation of Gordon Ballantyne. Wildberger, who had been an executive in Telstra’s consumer division since 2013, replaced Ballantyne as retail group executive.

    Telstra CEO Andy Penn announced Wildberger’s resignation this morning, saying he was sorry that Dr Wildberger would be leaving Telstra, “as he was a very capable telecommunications executive who had contributed to Telstra’s progress”.

    “Karsten is a great executive.  We will be disappointed to see him go but understand his personal reasons.  Karsten brings great energy and passion to our business and has significant global experience.”

    Penn said a successor to Wildberger will be announced in the near future.

    Wildberger is a former partner and managing director with The Boston Consulting Group and held Executive Vice President roles in Finance, Sales and Marketing for Deutsche Telekom in the UK and Germany. He also worked with Vodafone as an executive and interim CEO in Romania and is a Director of the Telstra Foundation and Telstra Ventures.

    The Telstra Retail business includes consumer and business divisions, product and digital business units with broader enterprise-wide responsibilities and a strong focus on customer advocacy.  The division is responsible for a significant portion of the Telstra’s revenue and profit.

    In a brief statement, Wildberger said “I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at Telstra and in Australia and am excited by the company’s prospects.

    “I was privileged to be selected by Andy Penn to lead the retail team.  I am grateful to this incredible company, its people and its customers for three years of achievement and inspiration.”

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