High-speed internet puts Adelaide on the fast track to fortune

WHEN the 500th building is hooked up to the City Council’s new 10 Gigabit network, Adelaide will have the fastest internet in the world. There are high hopes for the super-fast network. Dan Jervis-Bardy reports.

• Google targeted to establish in Adelaide, thanks to 10 Gigabit
• Super-speed fibre network on the way
• Datacom to set up in Adelaide creating 250 new jobs

WHEN Peter Auhl embarked on a listening tour of local businesses in 2015, the Adelaide City Council information chief heard the same gripe repeated over and over.

The companies complained that every day, about 4pm, their internet speed would slow, reliability waver and productivity plummet — sometimes by up to 30 per cent.

That window coincided with children returning home from school, firing up their laptops, flicking on Netflix and “swamping” an already congested cyberspace.

“The businesses were in competition with the kids,” Mr Auhl says.

“When we dug a little bit deeper, it was not only an issue about internet speed but about reliability as well and that affects productivity.

“When you’re taking about 30 per cent, that is a big number.”

Mr Auhl was tasked with developing a solution that would accelerate upload and download speeds while ensuring connections did not slow to a crawl, or collapse entirely, during the afternoon rush.

City Council Chief Information Officer Peter Auhl with TPG’s Mark Rafferty. Picture: Kelly Barnes

The technology needed to appeal to local businesses, but also to data-hungry interstate and international companies which might consider moving to SA if the price, and speed, was right.

Three years on, Mr Auhl is buzzing, confident the $12 million, 10 Gigabit network being rolled out across the CBD and North Adelaide in the next two years can and will achieve all four aims.

The City Council has projected that as soon as the first 500 buildings are hooked up to the fibre optic data network, Adelaide will have faster and more affordable internet than Seoul, South Korea — home to the world’s best broadband.

Since TPG Telecom was contracted in December to roll out the infrastructure, hundreds of businesses have signed up to join the scheme.

IT services provider Datacom will soon relocate from Findon to Franklin St to capitalise on the super-fast internet, while more tech-based businesses are understood to be on their way.

Analysis from Adelaide University’s SA Centre for Economic Studies show as many as 2500 new jobs will be created as a result of the new network, pumping up to $76 million in the local economy each year.

Most strikingly, Mr Auhl says it has, for the first time, put “Adelaide in the game” to entice a global-tech giant — Google, Microsoft or Apple — to establish a permanent presence in the City of Churches.

“This is game changer,” he says.

“And it is a game changer because it solves a problem and not just for today but forever.”

At its core, the fibre optic network is as much about avoiding the internet as it is about using it.

Once their premise is connected, businesses can access a range of “cloud-based services” through which they can undertake file transfers, voice and video communications and private business-to-business links.

The cloud is their ticket to circumvent the congestion of the internet by providing a circuitous pathway to connect directly to businesses with whom they deal.

The idea is that when 4pm peak hour arrives, those businesses will not be stuck in the traffic because they are travelling on an entirely separate route.

And a very fast one, too.

The 10GB connection — which costs $399 to install — will deliver data speeds roughly 100 times faster than the National Broadband Network and 400 times quicker than the Australian average.

It compares favourably with the State Government’s GigCity scheme, which will offer 1GB/second speeds at 13 key innovation precincts across the metropolitan area.

Mr Auhl says the network will be attractive for businesses reliant on transferring large files between one or two servers, such as health, medical and defence firms.

The lightning-fast data speed will offer a vital piece for infrastructure for others, such as global special effects company Technicolor.

The French group — whose effects appear in The Jungle Book, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man Walking and Blade Runner 2049 — last year announced plans to establish an SA base over the next five years, with the CBD now firming as its most likely home.

If luring Technicolor is a prized catch for the CBD, getting Google would be the equivalent of hooking a marlin. As news last month seeped out of Sydney that the New South Wales Government had rejected a proposal to build what would have been Google’s Australian headquarters, SA business, and political and academic leaders launched a charm offensive on the Silicon Valley company. The pitch for a Google HQ in Adelaide centred on the city’s relative housing affordability, world-class food and wine, and its soon-to-be world-leading internet capabilities.

The global tech-giant has repeatedly refused to speculate on its future since the Sydney plan crashed, giving potential suitors — which now include Melbourne — clean air to put forward their case.

Mr Auhl this week did not comment on potential discussions with Google, but says the City Council is speaking with enough “high-profile companies” to be confident of the 10GB network’s pulling power.

“We will now be on their radar,” he says.

“You look at companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft or Amazon, they are not necessarily looking at mega cities (for their headquarters).

“We want to make it … that if you do not need to be geographically located somewhere, you may as well be in Adelaide.

“We have a very small window of opportunity here, so we have to run — and we’re running.”

Adelaide University vice chancellor Peter Rathjen says the city is well-placed to entice global companies to establish offices in SA, particularly defence contractors cashing in on the $90 billion in naval shipbuilding money set to pour into the state.

“I think there are really good prospects,” Prof Rathjen says.

“We still have an affordable and liveable city … (and) those companies are attracted by the economic resurgence that should accompany the big defence spend.”

Whether Google or any other major national or international corporation ultimately elects to headquarter in Adelaide is beyond the City Council’s control, making it an unfair measure of whether the 10GB scheme is a smart use of $12 million in ratepayer cash.

A better gauge may be its effect on local businesses.

Does the high-speed network improve productivity, allowing businesses to blossom, employ more staff and perhaps resist temptations to move to the East Coast or beyond?

Australian Fashion Labels will present an early case study after signing up to connect its North Tce fashion house to the high-speed network.

Directors Dean and Melanie Flintoft of Australian Fashion Labels at their headquarters in the Adelaide CBD. Picture: AAP/Morgan Sette

Co-founders Dean and Melanie Flintoft say while they were not contemplating relocation, the 10GB connection will give them greater confidence to grow their global brand from Adelaide.

The pair understands better than most the power of the internet, having slaved away with sluggish data speeds when they established their business from their home in Stonyfell about five years ago.

Mr Flintoft says the 10GB network will offer a range of technical benefits for the company, which now employs 130 people at offices in Adelaide, Melbourne, Shanghai and Los Angeles.

But at its core it will just make life that little bit easier when the 4pm rush starts up again.

“Internet is just a crucial business tool,” Mr Flintoft says.

“And who hasn’t been in their office when the internet goes down and everyone sits around the office with nothing to do?”