Planning for an uncertain future
Filed under: business, innovation, networks, Next G™, technology, wireless
One of the hallmarks of a progressive company or country is planning for an uncertain future. While there are many “unknown unknowns” to quote Donald Rumsfeld, we should still be testing out different options and possibilities that may arise, preferably in order of likelihood and priority. To do this you require a workforce that is insightful and analytic. It is something we do as a matter of course at Telstra, starting off with the investigation of the different possibilities by my CTO group and culminating in field trials of new technologies by the engineering teams.
For example, take our Next GTM network: For some time we have been evaluating the next generation of technology known as LTE or “Long Term Evolution”. My CTO team has been modelling the network performance both in terms of speed and coverage, and identifying the opportunities presented by the technology. Now, my colleagues in Wireless Engineering, are implementing trials of the technology to ensure that the actual real-world performance meets our theoretical expectation.
Unfortunately in my daily life I see too many engineering failures which could have been avoided through a willingness to invest a small amount in testing future options.
Witness for example the failure of the Melbourne Eye, a structure costing 10’s of millions of dollars and which needed to be taken down due to unforeseen structural defects.
Another example is the Citylink road from the Tullamarine Airport into Melbourne. The exit from the Bolte Bridge to the Westgate Freeway has just been rebuilt, no doubt at considerable expense. Having spent a lot of money and time on the project, you would have hoped that it would reduce congestion on the tollway, but in fact it seems to have achieved the opposite. As a taxi driver pointed out to me, the engineers who designed the system do not appear to have planned for the obvious discrepancy in traffic loads for different destinations. There are 3 different destinations for those exiting the bridge: Docklands, the South Eastern suburbs (via the Burnley Tunnel) and the Westgate Bridge, and each direction has been allocated one lane. This would be logical except for the fact that most of the traffic on the bridge is usually going to the South Eastern suburbs with the result that the lane in this direction is permanently congested and the other 2 lanes are empty!
In both these examples, a rigorous testing program prior to construction, could have helped to uncover these design flaws.
Our children’s future cannot rely on us being the “lucky country” and digging ore out of the ground. We do need to show that we can turn the overworked phrase “smart country” into a reality. To achieve this we need to be encouraging the smartest and brightest of our children to be entering the sciences and engineering. We need a workforce that is analytical and intelligent to plan for a smart future – we cannot just assume that we will get one.
Please share your ideas on how we can plan for a smarter future.
“Please share your ideas on how we can plan for a smarter future.”
One word ..NBN..
and what about the suburbs of Gungahlin ACT where many customers are bandwidth limited on their adsl ports to 3Mbit/s or cannot gat adsl at all due to a lack of ports. These are fairly new suburbs. The lack of backhaul capacity from the rim/cmux also reduces the quality of service being purchased to as slow as dial-up in many cases.
was there any planning and modelling performed by Telstra before building these services ??
Quality v Time v Cost. Increase one and you must compromise on at least one of the other. Too often Cost & Time tend to be the key drivers for Goverments & Industry.
The cheapest solution is not always the best solution. The past decade Telstra management have always it seems! to have picked the cheapest solution, hence the company has massive debt, low investor confidence, lacks innovation and has a management team that relies solely upon stats and data to manage. Its managers have lost the ability to people manage. Telstra seems to have a upside down pyramid shaped workforce where it has more managers than ever with fewer staff under them. Telstra has a multituide of restrictive and confusing process’s in place. Stats and data can be manipulated to read however the statician or manager wants them to be read. I believe the uncertain future from the past decade is here right now and there is not much of plan from management in place is there?
I would like to see Australia’s push for a ‘smart country’ recognise the importance of design in developing solutions to problems whether it be engineering or human service delivery.
What a pity Rudd’s investment in Australia’s ‘infrustructure’ did not include a a better investment in the existing human capital and the value of design in all professions and services.
PS Chris – Good design can make a big impact on all aspects of the quality v time v cost tradeoff.
Sometime the issue is not that the future was not considered but that we need to think more broadly and look at alternatives as well. The more roads we build, the more cars will drive on them and they will always reach capacity.
We need to be thinking about alternatives and changing our behaviours to apply the best mix of options and results for everyone. In the transport example, it’s about alternative infrastructure for public transport, cycling etc as well as enabling the virtual alternatives and bringing about behaviours to maximise the value from such a combination of solutions.
We could start by valuing the fact we are good at “digging things out of the ground” rather than dismissing it as something worthless. The fact is Australia is very efficient at mining and there are many other world-leading businesses and industries in Australia supporting mining.
Rod – you’re right that you need to acknowledge the importance of Australia’s mining industry but you also need to plan for the time when it’s no longer the primary driver of Australia’s economy.
Like the Middle Eastern states looking to reinvent themselves as financial hubs to better prepare them for when the oil flows start to ease off, Australia and its companies need to invest heavily in the infrastructure required to position Australia to take advantage of emerging technologies and industries.
It also requires a renewed emphasis on getting the basics right from the beginning – ensuring access to quality education from pre-school right through to tertiary studies. Then you need to have in place the facilities to allow these new business people to invest in their ideas and come up with service based, value-adding ventures that result in more money coming into Australia than is flowing out.
It’s certainly not an easy journey to make – but those who start on it earlier in the global economy will be the ones who benefit the most.
I once read the best way to plan for the future is to assume the society/business needs will be 10 times what it is today. Based on this premise you ask the question \What do I need to change to efficiently meet this demand?\ From this analysis you make the changes needed to accommodate this volume.
So, vision is necessary. However, the will to change to match the vision is also necessary. These two elements need to precede the time/expenditure equation which, after all, only determines the speed and quality of the changes that will need to be made.
Australia is indeed the lucky country. And our luck is generated by the fact we have minerals in the ground in abundance that are required by other nations. The sad fact is that those in control of Business and Government do not have the desire to value add our products and resources.
Australia sells one ton of iron ore to Japan for a song and Japan sends us back a $120,000 Lexus. Mr Rudd hands out billions of dollars for stimulus most of which will benefit workers in China as Australians spend on products “Made in China”.
Thankfully Australians are awakening to the phantom spin and con that have seen financial disasters for the Australian taxpayers recently and the dangerous trend to domination and nationalization by the Australian Government.
Australia’s future will remain secure and prosperous only if Government embraces the free enterprise and competitive system that has served us will for many years. Of vital importance also is the value and service quality delivered by Australia’s industries.
Well that will suit Telstra just fine then Syd because, as David Thodey admitted right here @ Telstra Exchange 2/6 –
“I visited the Philippines call centres earlier this year and I was impressed with the dedication of the staff.
We have been using partners both in Australia and overseas successfully for many years, and we will continue to do so in the future.
WE ARE AN AUSTRALIAN COMPANY THAT IS BASED IN ASIA”. {END}…
Here is your version of free enterprise at work. Shaft Aussie workers and offshore to the lowest bidder…
What a lovely world you long for, all due to your own financial agenda…oh and good luck driving your ton of ore around!
RS I certainly agree with you that ideally it would be best if, where possible, Australians were employed by Australian companies. However, and without being critical of the ability of Australians, there are some tasks that are not suited to our culture. I do think from my experience that the Telstra employees in the Philippines give a more pleasant response than those based in Australia.
HB Your blog suggests that inside Telstra, the worrying about uncertain futures is as PG commented “NBN”.
My suggestion is that Telstra hasn’t proposed a credible and less monopolistic alternative which will satisfy its shareholders. Even though under Thodey and the post Sol team Telstra is less of a customer dragon and a better corporate citizen it is still trapped by legacy quango thinking and failure to realistically confront ferocious competition. Telstra hasn’t yet learned how to price like the supermarkets. Narelle Charity’s blog – Higher Data Allowances for Telstra Home Bundles is a move in the right direction but where is the x factor that will get old customers back and entice customers from rivals. Anyway technology has move on to integrated mobile and wireless communications/media systems. Unless Telstra gains more first time customers in this area it will lag in growth. Such customers are reluctant to change from their first choice regardless of technological innovation.
Australia is now an indelibly anti-Telstra environment – to the extent that Government and the ACCC encourages similarly integrated foreign telcos in preference to Telstra. Similarly the KRudd government would prefer to steal the Telstra HFC network rather than similar infrastructure owned by other telcos. If that fails then it will try to destroy Telstra through legislation.
So in Planning for an Uncertain Future Telstra should be looking beyond Australia eg see blog by Jason Friedler – “Where Data Lives”. and should be putting future resources into owning and developing international cable/satellite infrastructures and data streams which do not rely an an Australian Connection.
I was disappointed that Telstra didn’t take the recent opportunity to re-engage with the Indian Broadband market although I see at least one of your Telstra International Team has taken an interest.
Regardless of the NBN outcome Telstra should be planning to get bigger and to get further out into the wider world of international communications. Australia is world of bad vibes!
I have followed the progress of the NBN and there is a number of issues which I DO NOT LIKE.
To start there is 2 MAIN TOPICS.
1. Australia’s Security.
2. Service Standards.
Australia’s Security:
They talk about shifting the national landline network off the copper network unto the NBN.( Telephones, security alarms etc )
Will they be FULLY protected or will they just use INTERNET protocol of some type to connect them. We MUST NOT have this traffic available to hackers from around the world to have a go at.
They talk about the increase of traffic on the NBN, who is going to build the switching stages to switch this massive amount of traffic.
Who is going to monitor the network and provide the modifications that will be required to get it working the way communications have always worked in Australia. The way our present NETWORK was built over the last 50 and more years.
The reason for concern is the fact that the PRESIDENT of the USA stated very recently that he wanted the ability to shut down the internet because of problems from hackers overseas causing problems.
It is massive the number of DAILY attempts made from third world countries to the USA in trying to upset systems operating there. Is this the NEW WAR ACTION of today.
( Reported on Television here over the last week )
Starting from scratch with the NBN they should be building in a plan that will look after the above problems.
The ideal would be the way the OLD PMG to Telstra operated. ( Having a level of staff who fully understand how a product worked, and got extensive experience with the products. NOT JUST KNOW the THEORY ONLY!!!!! )
To change to the ideals of some today(Theory Only) will be problems and very expensive ones too. I have seen it before many times when they tried it in PMG through to Telstra. You need people with experience and understanding who can think ahead in reality. Also ones who can see future problems and ACT NOW before they affect anything. { PREACT }
SERVICE STANDARDS:
We need telephone calls to be at least as good as the present setup. People will not like
*ECHO of their voice in the background.
*NOISE Increase in noise on phone calls.
*DELAY People will find it difficult to cope with delay in phone calls like you get with live TV cross’s. A normal conversation would be difficult. This would happen if overloads on fibre occur and the telephone traffic is not separated.
Calls from overseas call centres which appear to come through the internet have massive service problems. WE DO NOT WANT THESE.
*DELAY of ALARMS if these circuits are not isolated from the general internet.
==== Increase of TRAFFIC on the internet is massive. Use of different ISP’s is a problem because some will just allow AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE on the network and cause problems. Downloading of High Definition DVD’s in a couple of seconds the statement given out about the NBN will cause problems that will need to be fixed early in the rollout.
They all look at the fibre cable and think that the spectrum is open ended. BUT NOTHING is OPEN ENDED. What about the interface’s and the gear required to switch this traffic. What are their limintations.
Finally:
*We DO NOT WANT a repeat of the AERIAL PAY-TV rollout(OPTUS) and the safety issues involved.
*We MUST NOT have fly by night CONTRACTORS doing the connection of customers to the network.
( I have seen a recent case where the result could have been two others dying, due to lack of workmanship and understanding of work procedures. )
*We MUST NOT HAVE the NBN CONTROLLED or SUPPORTED from overseas.( China)
(Almost everything we have or eat comes from overseas mainly China. Behind the scene’s China has not changed. )
This would mean they could stop our communications when they want to. They could also hack the network at will.
I love and think a lot of Australia and we must do our best to keep and improve it, but steps by some is leaving it open to abuse etc.
The National Broadband Network MUST be operated and CONTROLLED from inside AUSTRALIA and be part under Australian government control the way Telstra was at one stage.
Work should be done to combine Telstra and NBN again but NOT SPLIT Telstra to obtain it because there is more that just INSTALLATION ROLLOUT, there is ALSO SERVICE of the PRODUCT REQUIRED.