Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady justified the hundreds of millions of dollars she is pouring into artificial intelligence as essential because AI stands to solve one of the biggest frustrations of telco customers: outages.

“If there’s the one customer expectation that only goes one direction, that is: ‘I am always connected.’ There is no appetite for outage or downtime,” Ms Brady told The Australian Financial Review after confirming a $700 million joint venture with Accenture.