About Telstra

Telstra's Network

We offer a full range of mobile services to our customers, including voice calling and messaging, text and multimedia messaging and a range of information, entertainment and connectivity services.

Network and systems

One of our major strengths in providing integrated telecommunications services is our extensive geographical coverage through both our fixed and mobile network infrastructure. This network and systems infrastructure underpins the carriage and termination of the majority of Australia's domestic and international voice and data telephony traffic.

This large, diverse network is monitored and supported through a largely centralised global operations centre, which has a fully tested recovery plan that enables network management to be transferred to an alternate location in the event of an unforeseen disaster. Ongoing substantial investment of both capital and controlled entities and resources is required to ensure that we maintain this leading position from both a technology and industry position.

Research and development

Telstra reviews its project expenditure annually to determine its actual spend on research and development.

Our reviews show that we had an estimated spend of A$148 million in fiscal 2005 on research and development. The expenditure was determined to be A$159 million in fiscal 2004 and A$240 million in fiscal 2003.

Innovation Centres

Innovation@Telstra was launched in October 2004, with the opening of Innovation Centres in North Ryde, Sydney and Melbourne's Docklands. Since then, thousands of people have visited the centres, gaining hands-on experience with Telstra products and services to make our business and home lives easier in the 21st Century. The centres are also used as a venue to fast-track innovation projects for Telstra ensuring that we develop customer-focussed solutions, which get to market in a speedy manner.

In addition to customer visits, the Innovation Centres have also delivered a number of key projects via the Innovation PODs - a dedicated project floor focussing on accelerating solutions to market.

Some of these projects include:

  • The Digital Home: The strategy for home-based IP services delivering communication, entertainment, information and storage as well as security and automation services.
  • Community Information Warning System: A proactive community information, communication and warning system to save lives, reduce losses and speed recovery in the event of natural disasters, accidents or acts of terrorism.
  • Remote Working: A comprehensive solution for remote access to corporate customers' private data networks.

Transmission infrastructure

Our national transmission infrastructure consists of both terrestrial and non-terrestrial transmission systems. Our domestic terrestrial systems are almost exclusively digital and use approximately 4 million kilometres of optical fibre and more than 2,300 digital radio systems. Our major transmission routes incorporate Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) technology.

Throughout the year, work has continued on extending the benefits of self-healing SDH transmission out to the fringes of the network in metropolitan and regional areas. In total, approximately 20,000 additional customers now benefit directly from improved transmission survivability.

Our international switching and transmission requirements are provided by REACH, which owns international gateway switches in Sydney and an expanding network of switches across Asia, North America and Europe to augment its state-of-the-art global data/IP system. REACH uses satellite communication systems to supplement international traffic capacity where undersea cables are not feasible and to provide route diversity and circuit redundancy, as well as specialist satellite-based applications. REACH owns satellite earth stations in Australia and Hong Kong, including the largest satellite teleport in Asia.

Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN)

Australia's geographic characteristics provide unique challenges for the provision of nationwide digital PSTN coverage. These challenges are being overcome by the innovative application of a range of modern technologies. Over 300 major digital switching nodes are interconnected by state-of-the-art transmission systems and handle traffic from customers connected to more than 10,000 access sites. A combination of copper, fibre optic, radio and satellite technologies is used to achieve end-to-end connections. Access to the world is achieved through REACH's international gateway switches and our intelligent network platforms provide advanced services including toll-free and calling card products.

The PSTN supports voice, facsimile, internet and data products. Total call minutes handled by the PSTN is now showing a slight decline as data traffic moves to broadband access. The combination of new broadband access services and growth in dial-up internet usage, messaging services and mobile telephony is leading to convergence of voice and data in the longer term. This will provide a solid base for seamless transition to future convergent service provision.

Our network supports a range of switch features which facilitate voice calls. These include products like Homeline® features such as Call Waiting, Call Return, Abbreviated Dialling and Virtual Private Networks (VPN). New types of telephones and customer premises equipment which make these features more accessible and easy to use are continually entering the market.

The PSTN also supports many operator assisted service products such as directory assistance and Call Connect. We are seeking to enhance these services by automating them with voice recognition technology.

Fibre to the Premises (FTTP)

FTTP is a next-generation access infrastructure technology that can deliver telephony, broadband data, video and digital subscription television services, to customer premises on an optical fibre platform.

Fibre to the Premises is expected to play a pivotal role in Telstra's customer access network, along with copper, wireless and satellite technologies.

In June 2004, Telstra commenced an initial pilot of FTTP in two Queensland sites. The FTTP pilot is now successfully providing services to a number of residential homes, and continues to provide Telstra with insight into the ongoing effectiveness of FTTP as an access technology of choice.

We have also been trialling Voice over Broadband (VoBB). This solution will be provided as a second line solution offering a range of features and functionality for users with a broadband connection. During fiscal 2005, a VoBB network trial was completed with 150 of our employees in Melbourne.

Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN)

ISDN is a flexible, switched digital network. The integrated nature of this network refers to the fact that ISDN can support many applications at the same time while using a single access point to the network. The ISDN network supports traditional telephony as well as various data applications such as videoconferencing, internet access and EFTPOS.

The ISDN network is available to approximately 96 per cent of the Australian population. ISDN provides an end-to-end digital connection that allows us to deliver minimum 64kbps connections to customers.

Intelligent network (IN) platforms

We operate a number of IN platforms that support a range of advanced services across fixed, mobile and messaging services including:

  • inbound services such as Telstra Freecall® 1800, Priority® One3, Priority® 1300 and InfoCall® 190
  • Telstra Pre-Paid Mobile, Telstra Pre-Paid;
  • calling cards (Telecard®)
  • prepaid cards (Phoneaway®, Say G'day®)
  • information services numbers
  • number portability
  • mobile VPN, mobile voicemail
  • advanced network routing
  • screening functions.

Our inbound services are important to our major business customers because they support their call centre and customer service operations.

Data networks

We operate a number of data networks including::

  • Switched Data Network (SDN)
  • National Transaction Switching Network
  • Digital Data Network (DDN).

Our SDN comprises approximately 730 switches linked to access multiplexers at more than 120 sites around Australia. The SDN provides:

  • public packet switching data services suitable for a wide range of data applications
  • site-to-site and multi-site WAN connectivity
  • national coverage for frame-relay data services from 64kbps up to 45Mbps (subject to available transmission capacity)
  • national coverage for ATM data services, supporting access rates from 2Mbps to 622Mbps (subject to available transmission capacity)
  • national coverage for Business DSL data services, supporting access rates from 64kbps to 2Mbps (subject to available transmission capacity).

SDN is also the backbone for numerous IP WAN services, supporting a range of access types from the fixed ATM and frame services for domestic and global use to Dynamic Dial, ADSL, wireless services and value added features including firewalls, hosting, Messenger, IP Voice and IP Video.

Our retail customers use ATM and frame relay data services on the SDN to build wide-area corporate data networks. Our wholesale customers use the SDN as a key element of their own retail offerings.

Our National Transaction Switching Network is suitable for electronic funds transfer and inventory
applications. This network provides dedicated and dial-up access in a secure environment, suitable for transmitting transactions.

Our DDN, with its fully integrated management system, provides dedicated secure site-to-site transmission at speeds ranging from 1200bps up to 2Mbps. This network has extensive coverage, with more than 2,500 points of presence nationally across Australia for both Telstra retail DDS and Telstra Wholesale Data Access Radial (DAR) products.

In addition, the DDN is the underlying access infrastructure for our Accelerated Frame Relay product using our large network reach over multiple access technologies such as G.Shdsl, HDSL and optic fibre to enable customer access into the SDN core network. DDN also supports the declared wholesale product of Data Access Radial, which supplies the access for carriers to enable their customers to connect to their own retail offerings.

Internet Protocol (IP) networks

We operate a national internet backbone network. It is a fully IP-routed network, which provides the backbone for all of our Telstra Internet Direct services and all Telstra BigPond® internet offerings, as well as Telstra Wholesale's internet products. Our internet backbone network connects to the rest of the internet via the international links provided by REACH and connects domestically via peering links with peer ISPs.

We operate two major internet data centres, one in Melbourne and one in Sydney. The computer server infrastructure in these centres controls access to the network and provides applications including email, news, chat, web hosting and games. The server infrastructure supports real time activation of customers and also provides billing functionality, service monitoring and surveillance. Caching servers are deployed to store and serve often requested internet content so that customers receive faster web page delivery and we are able to contain our Internet traffic costs.

We have one platform that supports wholesale and retail internet products. This has been used to provide a Telstra BigPond® Home product with universal local call access across Australia. Telstra BigPond® Home is now available throughout Australia with dial-up access at the cost of a local call.

We deliver our IP Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) and Telstra Ethernet MAN services through an MPLS network that has ethernet switches located in customer buildings and interconnected by a high-speed network. IP MAN plus IP WAN together form the network to deploy our IP Solutions products. We are offering a Government IP solution which provides a fibre based IP network for use by Government agencies in metropolitan and regional locations, as well as accelerating the provision of fibre based wideband services by non-Government customers.

We have also extended the core, carrier grade IP network known as the Routed Data Network (RDN) to sites in metropolitan and some regional areas. The RDN supports the delivery of retail and wholesale Ethernet based products nationally.

Broadband network

We deliver broadband capability through a variety of technologies using cable modem, ADSL and satellite services. Our HFC broadband network passes approximately 2.7 million homes and approximately 73 per cent of the network is underground. The optic fibre component of this broadband network consists of two forward and one return path fibres, with the co-axial component serving an average of 900 customers each.

The cable network is designed to provide two-way transmission for interactive services and high-speed data transfer up to 10Mbps with an average speed of 6Mbps typical. ADSL is a broadband access technology using existing PSTN access infrastructure capable of speeds up to 7.8Mbps depending on distance from exchange and line condition. Current products offer speeds up to 1.5Mbps downstream and up to 256kbps upstream or 512kbps both ways. Although not yet commercially deployed, ADSL2 + capability has been introduced into 270 exchanges and offers up to 24Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream.

We have three fast broadband service options available to customers in ADSL enabled areas in Australia:

  • an internet service for residential customers that allows customers to use the internet through their existing telephone lines without tying up the phone line or needing an additional line
  • an internet service for companies to provide their staff, offices or branches with remote access capability to the corporate network
  • a service for ISPs to provide their customers with ADSL Internet access.

Since August 2000, we have been rolling out our broadband services and we achieved our target coverage for fiscal 2005 of approximately 1,700 ADSL enabled exchanges.

We also offer satellite broadband services via both a two way satellite service and a satellite download/dial-up backchannel in areas of Australia for customers who are unable to access broadband via cable or ADSL.

We are a registered provider under the Australian Government's Higher Bandwidth Incentive Scheme (HiBIS). This scheme aims to increase the availability of high bandwidth services throughout rural and regional Australia at prices that are broadly comparable with metropolitan areas. We have used the incentive to reduce the threshold levels on its ADSL Demand Register, making it easier for smaller communities to trigger ADSL investment. Between the period April 2004 when the scheme commenced, and June 2005, we provided ADSL to almost 600 rural and regional exchanges with the assistance of HiBIS funds.

For more remote customers, we used the HiBIS subsidy to reduce the prices of BigPond® 2-way Satellite and Broadband Regional Connect, a combination of an ISDN service and a 1-way satellite uplink.

Mobile telecommunications networks

We offer a full range of mobile services to our customers, including voice calling and messaging, text and multimedia messaging and a range of information, entertainment and connectivity services. Read our mobiles factsheet to find out more.

Electromagnetic energy (EME)

We rely on the expert advice of national and international health authorities such as the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) for overall assessments of health and safety impacts. The consensus is that there is no substantiated scientific evidence of health effects from the EME generated by radio frequency technology, including mobile phones and base stations, when used in accordance with applicable standards.

Certain reports have suggested that EME emissions from mobile phone base stations and radio communications facilities (including handsets) may have adverse health consequences for users and the community. We are committed to being open and transparent on all issues relating to EME emissions.

We comply with all relevant radio frequency standards and have comprehensive policies and procedures to ensure the health and safety of the community and our employees.

Telstra Research Laboratories ensure that we have accurate and scientifically substantiated information and contribute to the national and international EME research program. In the last 11 years we have invested more than A$10 million in this program.

An area of industry leadership is the development of base station EME software that calculates environmental emission levels in a matter of seconds. Our widely acclaimed RF-MAP™ software enables operators, local authorities and community groups to assess the environmental impacts of mobile phone base stations and confirm compliance with safety standards. We have given copies of our RF-MAP™ software to national and international health authorities as well as community and Government organisations, reflecting our commitment to sharing expertise and providing the community with easy to use solutions.

Australian carriers, through the Mobile Carriers Forum, are developing a site management process to help ensure compliance with the Australian Communications Authority (ACA) electromagnetic radiation framework and the Australian Communications Industry Forum (ACIF) code of practice for radio communications infrastructure deployment. We developed tools such as national site archive and National Antenna rooftop database which are being adopted by the Mobiles Carrier Forum.

Visit our EME site to find out more.

Information processes and systems

We have a range of information processes and systems to support our delivery of products and services.

We intend to increase the benefits of our offerings to customers by:

  • introducing new products to the market faster
  • further integrating our customer access technology and systems across channels
  • reducing our overall IT costs.

We have recently invested and will continue to invest in many new systems and processes in the following seven principal areas:

  • sales and marketing
  • customer ordering and provisioning
  • online access for customers
  • billing and credit management
  • service assurance
  • workforce management
  • back office processes.

We are focussed on rationalising and simplifying the delivery processes across Telstra. Together with our IT service providers, we will focus on driving efficiency and adaptability across our delivery systems.

In April 2005 we established Business Process Owners who have company wide accountability for their respective processes. We aim to continue significant improvements in our processes which will contribute to reduced cycle times, increased revenues and importantly, improved customer experience.

Information technology

In response to increased competitive pressures in Australia and internationally, we source in the global market innovative, world-class solutions for the provision of application development and maintenance services. This includes the development of new software programs and the enhancement and ongoing maintenance of existing software programs.

We are partnering with world class IT providers to deliver:

  • improved quality to a globally competitive standard
  • improved cycle times for new products and services
  • improved efficiency and lower prices
  • access to new technologies.
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