Telenor's - Ericsson

How Telstra gained speed to market
– without blowing the budget
When Telstra set out to transform its transmission network, it was not simply to
counter exploding traffic volumes.
Telstra used the restructuring as part of a long-term plan to get ahead of
the competition. How the Australian operator pulled it off is a lesson in how
intimately network strategy is coupled with business strategy.
▶ TRAFFIC VOLUME ACROSS Telstra’s fixed and
mobile network has doubled over the past
few years. Yet the company’s annual capital
spending on the national transmission infrastructure
actually declined over this period.
This is no small feat in itself, but the most
important gain in terms of competitiveness
has been that the revamped network allows
Telstra to move much more quickly and costefficiently
when launching new services.
Telstra started to transform the structure
of its national transmission network in 2005.
The original telephony-oriented architecture
was replaced with a much more powerful
and flexible Ethernet-enabled architecture.
Telstra can now bring both fixed and mobile
ip-based services to market more quickly
than ever before, reducing the time it takes
to realize revenues and ultimately, profits.
Examples include faster and faster broadband
speeds and a range of innovative new
services such as Telstra’s iptv offering,
called T-Box.
Australia’s natural environment is a challenge
for any type of national infrastructure.
Australia is a vast country, with an area comparable
to mainland Europe or the continental
US, but with a population one-tenth of
the size. Most of the country’s population is
located in major cities along the east coast.
In essence, Australia has a highly urbanized
population occupying a small part of a large
and mostly inhospitable land.
Outside of the cities and fertile coastal
areas, Australia is a tough environment for
telecommunications, with monsoon floods
in the north and droughts and bushfires
in the south. Telecoms equipment has to survive
temperatures over 50c and the remoteness
of many sites means it can take a maintenance
team days to reach and repair a faulty
node.
Despite these geographical challenges,
Telstra has built a highly resilient national
transmission network that connects all cities
and towns. Today, this network carries
broadband strategy
EBR #3 2010 45