Synopsis

Telstra’s score card is one of the best in the world among incumbent telecommunications companies. It is not only financial strong, it is also well-positioned to increase its business in the emerging digital, sharing and networking economy. It is successfully transforming itself into a full services ICT company.

Telstra’s mobile network in particular is, and will continue to be, well-positioned to offer superior services to those offered by the NBN company. Their aggressive pursuit of 4G, and next on the list 5G, will guarantee this. While these mobile networks will not cater for all of the ‘big iron’ broadband services, because of the company’s superior and most likely competitive offering, a large number of mobile-based access services will be used in this way. The ongoing delays in the actual availability of the NBN are also playing in Telstra’s favour. Furthermore, through its national Wi-Fi and fibre backbone networks it can rapidly offload any heavy broadband traffic from its mobile network onto its fibre backbone.

All indications are that under the new leadership of Andrew Penn the success story will continue.

Key developments:

New CEO appointed for Telstra, effective May 2015; IoT, M2M, bandwidth, ARPU, e-health, tele-education, smart grids, analytics, iPhone, smartphone, OTT, m-payment, e-payment, smart cards, e-commerce, mobile broadband, trans-sector, infrastructure, wholesale, retail, Internet of Things.

Companies covered in this report:

Telstra, Vodafone, FOXTEL, SingTel Optus, Sensis.