Bevan Slattery’s HyperOne network to drive $22bn growth

A $1.5bn national digital superhighway will accelerate development in northern Australia and scale up the country’s digital sovereignty.

Bevan Slattery says of HyperOne: ‘It will help bridge the digital divide between regional Australia and capital cities through the inclusion of more than 2000 on-ramps across rural and remote areas.’

A $1.5bn national digital superhighway – on track to begin construction early next year – will help increase economic growth by $22.6bn, accelerate development in northern Australia and scale up the country’s digital sovereignty.

Tech entrepreneur Bevan Slattery said the HyperOne network, consisting of more than 20,000km of high-speed cable capable of transmitting more than 10,000 terabits per second, would establish northern Australia as a critical “data hub for South-East Asia”.

Amid rising geostrategic tension and rapid technological advances, the HyperOne founder said the network would reduce the region’s reliance on cables “that traverse the South China Sea”.

“It’s actually difficult for most Australians to understand how exposed we are as a nation from a massive under-investment in national backbone connectivity,” Mr Slattery said.

“With so much emphasis on large distribution networks like the NBN and 5G, we have taken our eye off our ageing assets that interconnect these networks across this vast country.

“These networks were designed and built literally last century – and built for a different time. It’s only now with issues such as Covid and geopolitics that people have started to understand how exposed we are becoming as a nation.”

New research by Deloitte Access Economics assessing the economic impacts of the HyperOne fibre optic transmission network found the project would help drive $22.6bn in broader digital productivity gains, including $3bn in direct benefits. The analysis showed half of the economic gains generated by HyperOne would be in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

Mr Slattery said the project, which moved to formal expressions of interest this week, would connect capital cities in all states and territories, as well as regional Australia.

“It will help bridge the digital divide between regional Australia and capital cities through the inclusion of more than 2000 on-ramps across rural and remote areas,” he said.

Northern Territory Investment Commissioner Andy Cowan said upgrading digital infrastructure would be critical in driving “new economic opportunities”.

Data centre operator NextDC chief executive Craig Scroggie said the next 10 years of data usage would see “bigger growth than the last 10 years”.