Thursday, 21st July 2022
If the Covid-19 pandemic had occurred in 2002 instead of SARS we would have been in much greater trouble. Fewer than 16% of Australian households had broadband in 2002 (today it is up to 91%). Videoconferencing solutions were limited to expensive (and user-unfriendly) corporate systems and were certainly not available to households. IP/Cloud contact centres were available but had virtually no adoption. Streaming video was beyond our wildest dreams.
Fortunately in 2020 these solutions were available and affordable but, until the pandemic, not really exploited by consumers and businesses to any great degree (in the first 8 weeks of the pandemic e- commerce sales – as a percentage of retail sales – increased more than the previous decade).
The pandemic has changed our expectations of telecommunications. It is now an essential part of daily life and businesses cannot operate without it. However, as the recent Hartsuyker Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee has found, the availability of telecommunications is not uniformly spread across the country. Some 30% of the population live outside capital cities and often face major challenges with their telecommunication services. In this talk, Hugh will discuss some of those challenges and also the technology considerations that must go into addressing them. For example, will Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellite constellations solve all the major issues and will they make NBN geostationary satellites obsolete?
Another major frustration for users across the country, but particularly in regional areas, is the massive rise of spam and scam calls and texts. Is the ACMA doing enough to combat this? For example, why are carriers not mandated to implement the STIR/SHAKEN protocols? Why are Australian phone numbers so widely available? Again, this will be another point of discussion in the talk.
The event will be held via Zoom, with Zoom joining instructions sent to registered attendees just prior to the event. Registration is via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/post-pandemic-telecommunications-tickets-357640571577
The event is co-hosted by IEEE ComSoc. Please feel free to share this invitation widely with your professional colleagues.
Date and Time
Thu, 21 Jul 2022
12:30 - 13:30 AEST
Location
Presenter(s)
Hugh S. Bradlow is President of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering. He is also Chair of the Board of ASX-listed company Rocketboots and an independent Non-Executive Director of Silicon Quantum Computing Pty Ltd. He also served on the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee for 2021.
He was previously Chief Technology Officer and Head of Innovation at Telstra, responsible for the R&D of new technologies and their introduction into Telstra’s business. Before joining Telstra in September 1995, Professor Bradlow was Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Wollongong in Australia and Professor of Electrical Engineering (Digital Systems) at the University of Cape Town.
Professor Bradlow is a graduate in electrical engineering from the University of Cape Town in 1973 and received the D.Phil. degree for research in experimental nuclear physics from the University of Oxford.
He is globally recognised as a thought leader in telecommunications and was elected as the joint 2009 Australian Telecommunications Ambassador of the Year, named by Global Telecom Business as one of the most 100 most influential telecommunications executives in the world and Smart Company designated him as one of the 12 most influential people in Australian ICT.