Kym Niblock

Massive shout out to Vicki Brady for an outstanding presentation at the Canberra Press Club yesterday. Vicki covered a lot of ground from Connectivity to Energy, to AI and Rural Australia- including growing up in a town where her parents ran the local pub (and where the Telcom technician was personally known and regularly called to come give a hand when the phone line was down!). Sharing the sentiments from Lyndall Stoyles with the key takeaways from this session. Was also great to hear Vicki's unwavering focus on upskilling existing Telstra staff on AI and her recommendation to extend that on a national scale. "Unless we act now, the once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve Australia's competitiveness and prosperity will pass us by. That's what Vicki Brady's speech at National Press Club of Australia today reinforced to me. Now is the time for action. So what should we do next? It starts with a clear vision about the digital future we want to create for Australia and the role the telecommunications industry will play to get us there. This vision will need to include: 🗼Connectivity isn't possible without all the physical infrastructure that makes it possible - so we need a national digital infrastructure plan. This plan should encourage investment, help manage deployment, and ensure that scarce resources like spectrum are used for the greatest possible benefit. 👩‍🏫Being able to deliver this infrastructure and making the most of it once we have it takes smart people - which means we need a national technology skills development plan to ensure Australia has the skills and confidence to drive our digital future. This is so important if we want the rapid adoption of AI to help to close rather than exacerbate Australia’s digital divide. ✅To ensure consumers are protected and industry is encouraged to innovate and grow, we need balanced policy and regulations. There's a big opportunity for the Australian Government to look at what regulations should be retained, what should be removed and what should be modernized. Applying a Regulatory Incentives Grid could increase transparency and coordination, ensuring regulations are delivering the vision for Australia’s digital future." Vicki Brady Kim Krogh Andersen Lyndall Stoyles Dino GeorgiouSteven WorrallNina Vines Adam Chalak Stanley Lim Kirsten Garwood Narelle Devine CSM Craig HancockMatt Linnegar, FARLFSteven Miller Rodrigo Kede Lima

139

2 Comments

A lot of interest today in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) launch of its Auckland data centre region. I've done a number of interviews on this. A few thoughts about it: - I thought there would be some actual news - most of this was announced years ago, with a few updates in recent months about the anchor tenants. - Whether the investment amounts to $7.5 billion over 15 years or a fraction of the claimed amount, it's good to have significant investment from a multinational going ahead despite our economic challenges. Access to local instances of Bedrock, Sagemaker and close proximity to their data centres sees us finally catch up with most other developed nations. - I wish AWS would just say where their colocated data centres are and who operates them and be open about their stalled efforts in West Auckland to build their own one. It would build public trust and confidence in the long run. Great work from Jonathan Milne gleaning what he could about those stalled efforts. https://lnkd.in/gRGddHMg - The AWS renewable energy deal with Mercury gives them reasonable capacity, just like Microsoft's deal with Contact Energy, but both data centre operators are essentially drawing power from the national grid. If the squeeze goes on due to fluctuations in renewables, they'll be burning coal to power their data centres, just like every other business. How would that reconcile with their 100% renewables pledges? Buy carbon credits to top up? - AWS couldn't tell me, but I don't expect large-scale AI workloads to be running in those data centres in the short term - it will largely be what NZ Inc. prioritises in the digital world - data and applications hosting. But the free training opportunities (50,000 Kiwis trained in cloud skills, and another 50,000 to go, according to AWS) represent an opportunity for people to gain some cloud skills at a time when unemployment is high. - Great to have the multinationals with robust infrastructure here, but we should still pursue sovereign cloud and AI efforts to make sure we aren't locked in to the big three US cloud platforms, particularly in the current geopolitical climate.

69

9 Comments