Technology is rapidly transforming many Australian and global industry sectors. For electric, natural gas, and water utility companies, the need to embrace digital transformation and evolve to become a “digital enterprise” has never been clearer. What is a digital enterprise? A digital enterprise can be defined as an organisation where digital technology plays a central role in how the company: [...]
NBN Co will explore possible approaches for the procurement of additional dark fibre services for enterprise and government customers in locations already served by existing fibre in its telecommunications industry consultation paper. NBN Co is proposing to augment its extensive deployment of Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) technology by drawing greater utility from the spare capacity in Australia’s existing stock [...]
Optus has been ordered by the Federal Court to pay $6.4 million in penalties for making misleading claims about home internet disconnections to consumers, following proceedings brought by the ACCC. On 24 May 2018, Optus emailed 138,988 of its own mobile customers claiming their existing home broadband services, provided by Optus’ competitors, would be ‘disconnected very soon’. The email encouraged [...]
Telstra and Belong customers that upgraded to higher-speed NBN plans will be proactively contacted if they are not getting the maximum speed available under the plan. Under a November 2017 court-enforceable undertaking, Telstra was required to check customers’ broadband speeds if they were connected to the NBN via FTTN or FTTB technology. If a customer’s connection wasn’t able to get [...]
nbn co has earned $876 million in total revenue for the first quarter of fiscal year 2020, up 41 per cent on the corresponding period in FY2019. The company continued its strong momentum on the national broadband network rollout, declaring 335,000 additional premises ready to connect in the first quarter of FY2020. This progress has resulted in a total of [...]
AGL Energy has has entered into a conditional agreement offering to acquire Southern Phone Company Limited (SPC), one of Australia’s largest regional telecommunications businesses with 100,000 customers nation-wide. The proposal is part of AGL’s plans to pursue growth in the convergence of energy and data, believing it will bring significant benefits to its customers. The offer, if accepted, would see the [...]
The ACCC will consider whether Australians are able to access basic broadband plans at fair and affordable prices, as part of an inquiry into NBN wholesale charges launched in October. The inquiry will examine wholesale prices paid by retail service providers (RSPs), which use the NBN to supply residential-grade broadband services. The ACCC’s inquiry will focus on prices for basic [...]
The Northern Territory’s Power and Water Corporation has released a suite of detailed documents relating to learnings from its Solar Energy Transformation Program (SETuP), the largest isolated off-grid solar program in remote Australian communities. Completed in April 2019, SETuP saw the rollout of 10MW of solar in 25 remote Northern Territory Aboriginal communities, integrating utility solar and battery storage into [...]
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has proposed new terms aimed at improving nbn co’s wholesale service levels, including a reworked rebate structure for missed appointments, late connections and unresolved faults. In a draft decision released on 1 October 2019, the ACCC has put forward new regulated wholesale terms for the service standards nbn Co provides to retail service [...]
nbn co has released its Corporate Plan 2020-2023, confirming it is on schedule and on budget to complete construction of the NBN access network by 30 June 2020. By the end of the 2020 financial year, 11.5 million homes and businesses are on track to be able to order a service on the NBN access network. At present, approximately 86 [...]
TransGrid Telecommunications has commenced an NBN Points of Interconnect (POI) fibre build project to 41 POI in NSW and ACT, strengthening the company’s alternative network and improving choice for Retail Service Providers (RSP). TransGrid’s network will include high speed NBN POI backhaul connectivity, enhancing the company’s network reach to both metro and regional New South Wales via the NBN Enterprise [...]
Why asset-intensive sectors have been slow to upgrade enterprise capability and how they will benefit. by Brian Devlin, Industry Director, TechnologyOne While sitting further behind other industry sectors when it comes to uptake of new technologies, a staggering 80 per cent of Australasian utilities, water, ports and airports organisations surveyed intend to replace or adopt new enterprise solutions within the next [...]
Western Power’s Field Mobility Services (FMS) has transformed the way maintenance work is completed on the transmission and distribution networks across Western Australia’s South West Interconnected Network. From Kalbarri in the north, Albany to the south and Kalgoorlie to the east, Western Power safely and efficiently operates and maintains 101,097km of powerlines for its customers. The network is the size [...]
Industry 4.0 Testlabs are an Australian Government initiative aiming to showcase and promote technologies which can improve the competitiveness of Australian businesses. The University of Western Australia’s Testlab is a state-of-the-art facility that will contribute to development of interoperability standards that will be critical to fully unlocking these improvements. The University of Western Australia (UWA) is one of six universities [...]
Alongside energy affordability issues, the cost of basic NBN plans is cause for concern according to Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chair, Rod Sims, who says that NBN plans are more expensive than what most consumers pay for equivalent ADSL plans. For around $50 per month a customer could, and still can, get an ADSL internet and voice plan [...]
The winners of the 2019 Digital Utility Awards have been revealed at a Gala Dinner at the Digital Utilities Conference in Melbourne. Six awards were handed out celebrating the utility industry’s greatest achievements in the digitisation of utility networks, processes and practices across Australia. The winners are: Best Customer Innovation Award - Jemena Best Use of New Technology Award - [...]
Impacted zones in Townsville have now reopened following major flooding, allowing nbn CO’s Emergency Management and field teams, in partnership with its delivery partners, to replace damaged infrastructure, install generators and access closed off areas to assess further damage. There are currently limited services impacted, but nbn Co expects there will be further impacts to the network as it responds [...]
While fixed-line NBN customers generally had good speed levels during recent ACCC broadband speed tests, some customers experienced a dip in speeds. The ACCC’s latest Measuring Broadband Australia report expands the number of retail service providers (RSPs) to include Dodo, iPrimus and Exetel, enabling the report to cover a wider range of price points. The performance of most RSPs remained [...]
nbn Co announced that it is the first commercial Australian network operator to become a member of the global Open Networking Foundation (ONF). Industry bodies like ONF break down inflexible systems and allow operators to pick the best-in-breed component for their organisation by providing access to open-source software and hardware. Traditional proprietary platforms can create a vendor ‘lock-in’, causing operators [...]
A Northern Territory Government (NTG)/Telstra Remote Telecommunications Co-Investment Program has connected those living in the remote communities of Mt Liebig, Kintore and Yarralin to mobile phone and broadband services. There have now been 14 remote Territory communities connected to mobile and/or broadband services, since the start of the Co-investment Program in 2015. Services at Mt Liebig have been connected through [...]
The Queensland Government will use 6000km of state-owned fibre optic cable to boost internet connectivity and potentially lower prices for more than 600,000 businesses and households around the state. Following a commitment during the 2017 election, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced the government will set up a new entity — ‘FibreCo Qld’ — to partner with internet service providers. Ms [...]
Close to 4.5 million Australian residents now have access to an NBN broadband connection at home, with over 50 per cent of these opting for plans with speeds of 50Mbps or more, according to the latest Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) quarterly Wholesale Market Indicators Report. The ACCC’s report for the September quarter shows the number of NBN residential [...]
by Bob Ashenbrenner Did you know that nearly half of field service technicians claim “paperwork and administrative tasks” are the worst part of their day? Or that despite the “digitalisation” of the field service sector, technicians still waste an unacceptable amount of time looking for information to do their jobs? These revelations, uncovered in The Service Council’s report Field Service [...]
The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) has announced a reduction in the number of complaints delivered about NBN Co services, with nearly a 33 per cent reduction in complaints about connection or changing provider. The decline follows a number of targeted efforts to improve the customer experience including: Introducing new tools to help better diagnose and understand the cause of faults [...]
A new upgrade has doubled bandwidth capacity on nbn’s 60,000km fibre optic broadband network, helping deliver broadband services to more customers with a bigger appetite for data. The upgrade means nbn can increase maximum capacity on its transit network from 9.6 Terabits per second (Tbps) to 19.2Tbps per fibre link, which will help meet the broadband needs of homes and [...]
With concerns raised by the ACCC, one National Broadband Network provider will no longer advertise its services as ‘congestion-free’. Since July 2017, Aussie Broadband claimed that it offered ‘congestion-free NBN’ and a ‘congestion-free network’. These statements were used widely in its advertising, including throughout its website, Facebook posts and advertisements, targeted emails and direct mail-out letters. ‘Congestion’ occurs in broadband [...]
The Sunshine Coast is set to be more connected than ever, with major new telecommunications infrastructure going ahead thanks to $15 million in funding from the Queensland Government’s $150 million Jobs and Regional Growth fund. Queensland Minister for State Development, Manufacturing, Infrastructure and Planning, Cameron Dick, said the $15 million commitment to assist the Sunshine Coast Council to secure the [...]
NBN Co has announced that it is on track for completion of the NBN by 2020, aiming to have 11.7 million houses ready to connect, 8.1 million activations, $3.9 billion in revenue in FY20 and $51 billion in peak funding. These targets are outlined in the NBN Co’s recently released Corporate Plan 2019-2022. The network rollout has reached momentum and [...]
The NBN Co has announced an increase in its total revenue to $1.98 billion, reporting solid improvement on customer experience metrics throughout the 2017/18 financial year. The company made progress against its goal to complete the network build by 2020, declaring 8.1 million premises ready for service and seven million premises ready to connect. At the end of FY18, more [...]
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