NewsBite

IT networks

September

Former Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin testified at the Senate inquiry into the telco’s outage

Optus communications ‘manifestly inadequate’ in 2023 phone outage

Senators want new rules to force telco groups to keep the public updated when phone and internet connections fail.

  • Updated
  • Jenny Wiggins

August

TPG Telecom chief executive Inaki Berroeta.

TPG Telecom cuts 120 jobs as interim profits slide

The telco group, which is carrying more than $4 billion in debt, says it needs to keep reducing its expenses.

  • Jenny Wiggins
Aussie Broadband co-founder and managing director Phillip Britt

Aussie Broadband pays first dividend, cuts jobs

Aussie Broadband declared its first-ever dividend after it connected more customers to the internet, boosting annual net profit by 21 per cent.

  • Jenny Wiggins
AirTrunk owns 11 large-scale data centres or data centre developments, including this one in Hong Kong. It is run out of North Sydney, Australia.

ASIC puts Macquarie’s $20b AirTrunk sale on private markets watchlist

ASIC will spend the next two years looking at private markets deals, including a deal-of-the-year in the making.

  • Anthony Macdonald
ASX chairman Damian Roche is resisting calls for his resignation.

The ASX’s legal mess reveals deep-rooted problems in boardrooms

Court action against the ASX over its bungled CHESS replacement project reflects a worrying escalation in the box-ticking, compliance culture inside Australian boardrooms.

  • Updated
  • Tony Boyd
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July

Former TPG Telecom email customers to be slugged up to $95 annually

Accounts with iiNet, Internode and Westnet addresses will start paying a yearly fee from September after they were transferred to a Norwegian-owned company.

  • Jenny Wiggins

IT outage: ‘significant’ cost to Australian economy

Australian companies and services are struggling with knock-on effects from an unprecedented global IT outage caused by a simple software update.

  • Updated
  • Savannah Meacham and Samantha Lock
Phillip Britt is the chief executive of Aussie Broadband. He wants to capture more of the broadband market with cheaper products.

Aussie Broadband discount offshoot Buddy chases lost customers

Aussie Broadband is hoping to win back some of the customers lost to rival Superloop with a new, cheap internet brand, Buddy Telco.

  • Jenny Wiggins
Liverpool Partners’ Brad Lancken.

Liverpool Partners hires Macquarie Capital for Seisma sale

Diligence materials on Seisma, which makes close to $25 million in earnings, are in front of a small group of offshore strategics and local sponsors.

  • Sarah Thompson, Kanika Sood and Emma Rapaport

June

‘Private AI’ surge powers Equinix’s $240m data centre expansion

The surge in AI use adds to existing drivers for data centre demand, including cloud computing and increasing consumption of streaming services and social media.

  • Nick Lenaghan
Business pay rises slow down.

Businesses hit the brakes on large pay rises

The pandemic era of inflated salary increases appears to be over as the economy slows and skills shortages ease. 

  • Euan Black

May

The 2022 cyberattack on Optus brought significant scrutiny to bear on the company’s management of personal data.

Optus loses appeal to keep Deloitte report on cyberattack secret

The decision means information in a report commissioned by Optus into the causes of its 2022 cyberattack will be given to a class action law firm.

  • Jenny Wiggins
Downer EDI chief executive Peter Tompkins.

More jobs go at Downer EDI in efficiency drive

Dozens of employees have lost their jobs in a new wave of cost-cutting including senior executives and people in the engineering group’s IT operations.

  • Jenny Wiggins
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company was now “pushing the boundaries” of how much personal or business information it was able to pass on to Gemini for every query.

Google steals OpenAI’s thunder with something 15 times bigger

The new version of Gemini can write poems about objects it’s seen, or even tell the user where it last saw her glasses.

  • John Davidson

April

Optus has struck a $1.6 billion deal with rival TPG Telecom.

Optus parent writes off billions and strikes $1.6b deal with TPG

Singtel has had to write off billions of dollars on Optus, offset partly by the beleaguered telco striking a $1.6 billion deal with Australian rival TPG.

  • Updated
  • Jenny Wiggins
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Riverside managing partner Simon Feiglin helped grow Energy Exemplar from a small Australian firm to a global power market leader.

The Riverside Company seeks to acquire Wollongong-based IT business

The mooted sale comes after Virtual IT fielded interest from a bunch of private capital players in 2023.

  • Sarah Thompson, Kanika Sood and Emma Rapaport
Superloop CEO Paul Tyler will be among witnesses called by Aussie Broadband in a trial.

Aussie Broadband to call Barrenjoey, Luminis in Superloop court battle

Investment bankers and Superloop directors and executives will be subpoenaed as witnesses in a Federal Court trial as Aussie Broadband continues to fight its rival over a forced share sale.

  • Jenny Wiggins
K Krithivasan: “We are in a situation where the technology should be able to predict a call coming and then proactively address the customer’s pain point.”

AI could kill call centres, says boss of Tata IT business

Chief executive K Krithivasan says chatbots would soon be able to analyse a customer’s transaction history and do much of the work done by call centre agents.

  • Benjamin Parkin and Chris Kay
The email addresses used by IiNet account holders are now utlimately managed by a Norwegian company.

TPG, iiNet email accounts bounce to Philippines, Norway

Users of TPG Telecom and iiNet email have to deal with a call centre and a parent company in the northern hemisphere after their accounts were handed over to The Messaging Company.

  • Jenny Wiggins
AI is fuelling demand for cloud computing and data centres.

NextDC feeds the ducks while they’re hungry

The data centre owner has played the capital markets game superbly to be on the cusp of the top-50 stocks. To stay there, it has to deliver.

  • Anthony Macdonald

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/topic/it-networks-hqr