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Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Aussie broadband eyes growth with ‘Look to 28'
Australia's Aussie Broadband has unveiled its new 'Look to 28' strategy as part of its investor day, with the company outlining its bold vision for growth and diversification over the next three years. Aussie Broadband has outlined an ambitious growth target which will see the company strive for revenue growth of 35% over the next three years to A$1.6bn ($1bn). Aussie Broadband has outlined its strategic priorities, which include growing the business across all segments and countries, enhancing customer experience, expanding its fibre infrastructure while developing systems for scalable growth while focusing on security. In addition, the company will be further introducing a six-pillar technology plan that will focus on emphasising security, transformation, innovation, and delivering through service excellence. While this announcement from Aussie Broadband is aggressive, the company should expect to experience some headwinds with the Australian telecommunications market remaining hyper-competitive and further consolidation on the horizon for the business, enterprise, and government segments in the near-term. The introduction of the National Broadband Network (NBN) into the Australian market has bolstered the company from a rural Australian internet service provider to a formidable player in the country's telecommunications landscape. The company's financial trajectory has been impressive, experiencing strong revenue growth of 51% CAGR over the last four years, predominately due to its strong growth within its residential segment and with its recent acquisitions of Over the Wire, a connectivity and managed service provider, and Symbio Networks, an IP Voice communication services company, have bolstered the company's capabilities. A key aspect of Aussie Broadband's strategic ambition is to change its revenue mix, reducing its reliance on the residential segment and to grow other areas of the business. The company will look to increase its market share in the business, enterprise, and government segments, where the company will combine these markets into one segment as it looks to increase efficiencies across its delivery, operations, and customer management teams while simplifying its product portfolio with sector crossover. The carrier will also look to target all industry verticals across small businesses, while in the enterprise market focuses on retail, financial services, construction, and healthcare verticals in addition to local and government agencies. The Australian telecommunications landscape, particularly in the business and enterprise segment, continues to transform and evolve, contributed by technological advancements, the rise of cloud services and commoditisation of connectivity all contributing to the market consolidating to become a more service-centric ecosystem. The Australian business and enterprise telco market continues to consolidate with Vocus receiving the green light from Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to acquire TPG Telecom's fixed and fibre networks assets along with its business, enterprise, and government customer base. Brendan Swan, Senior Research Analyst, GlobalData said, 'GlobalData expects that the Australian market will continue to grow even with consolidation in the market, with connectivity expected to grow 4.9% over the next 3 years'. 'Aussie Broadband could attempt to grow its market share at the expense of TPG Telecom targeting the carrier's customer base, by potentially leveraging the uncertainty of the imminent merger, though the carrier will more than likely try to capture more of Telstra's price-sensitive customers, focusing on its strong customer service and automation-led service delivery,' said Swan. 'With most businesses seeing connectivity as just a commodity, Aussie Broadband should look beyond its core connectivity portfolio and strengthen services capabilities in the areas of security, cloud and managed services to meet the changing demands of enterprise customers', Swan added. "Aussie broadband eyes growth with 'Look to 28'" was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
The Guardian
01-03-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Black spots, satellites and Elon: new technology could fill Australia's mobile gaps – but can it be relied on?
Bernie Byrnes, a farmer from the southern tablelands of New South Wales, can tell when he is about to hit a mobile black spot on a highway. 'There's spots on the side of the highway where reception falls out. And you can see it if you're familiar with the vehicles that travel. People will pull over in the same spot to finish a conversation, finish a meeting. And you know that they're familiar with the reception there,' he says. Successive governments have plugged millions of taxpayer dollars into improving mobile coverage across Australia. But the perennial problem facing the country is its sheer size, compared against its population size, and whether it is cost-effective to build towers for places with low populations, or places people briefly travel through, such as highways. The universal outdoor mobile obligation, to be introduced by the Labor government as legislation if it wins the next election, would expand existing obligations for triple zero access across the nation to include outdoor voice and SMS coverage, and also aim to improve the availability of mobile services during disasters and power outages. The arrival of new satellite services could help fill the gap. Low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites fly between 500 and 2,000 kilometres above sea level, and rotate the Earth multiple times a day. While the world's craving for a constant connection has led to these technologies being developed and used globally, the proliferation of a growing number of smaller satellites and service providers has caused concern among astronomers, around issues such as light pollution and space junk. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads But they are quickly filling the gap in telecommunications services for remote places where it is too cost-prohibitive to roll out fixed networks or mobile towers, and offer better quality service than geostationary satellites such as the National Broadband Network's (NBN) Sky Muster satellites. NBN Co is in the advanced stages of selecting an LEO provider to eventually replace the ageing satellite service in operation now – but meanwhile, more than 200,000 people in Australia have signed up to Elon Musk's Starlink service as an alternative. Satellite services have initially been limited to fixed services. But advances in the technology are shifting, allowing people to have direct-to-device access to satellite connections. This means that – provided the person is standing outside – they could access satellite on their mobile phone for texting and calls. In the recent Los Angeles wildfires, T-Mobile used its direct-to-device service in partnership with Starlink to allow customers using existing 4G handsets to make calls and send text messages despite traditional mobile network outages. The Albanese government is banking on this advancement to plug black spots across Australia and make networks more resilient in the event of power outages or natural disasters. There is scant detail on how much it would cost. Officials in Senate estimates hearings last week could not put a price tag on the new universal outdoor mobile obligation, saying cost was 'a matter for future budget consideration by government'. Current funding for the existing universal service obligations is $270m a year. The government plans to introduce legislation in 2025 after consultation – putting the timeline beyond the next election – and it would not be in place until late 2027. Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion It has flagged the policy needs to include support for 'public interest objectives and competition outcomes'. Competition is a major concern. The only commercial LEO operator in Australia right now is Starlink. While others, such as Amazon's Project Kuiper, are planned for Australia, concerns were raised in Senate estimates by the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young as to whether sovereign risk analysis had been done. 'If Starlink is the only company, US-owned, what does that mean if somebody – Elon Musk, somebody else, I don't know – decides that it's not a service to be offered to Australia?' Hanson-Young asked. James Chisholm, the infrastructure department deputy secretary, said extensive analysis had been conducted, and that despite Starlink playing an important role, the policy 'is sending a clear signal' on welcoming other entrants into the market. David Howell, a resident of Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains in NSW, says he estimates about 50% of the approximately 70 properties in his town do not get mobile coverage at home. 'Any improvement we can get in mobile reception would be fantastic,' he says. What's especially important, he adds, is for the community to be able to contact one another during emergency situations, when mobile towers may be down and landlines aren't working. 'Anything will help because it's very important we be able to contact the community [about] what's going on, and whether to evacuate or not.' Byrnes says improved coverage would give peace of mind, and make work more efficient. 'The more that you can rely on technology, the more efficient that you can become,' he says. 'If we're waiting for a carrier to come and pick up stock or wool or whatever, if they're running late, we rely on them to give us a heads up, or vice versa. 'If we're sitting around, it's dead time for everyone. And so if we've got reliable phone reception, we can let people know.'
