Australia risks getting left behind by the AI wave because of red tape stopping firms from building essential digital infrastructure, the head of the nation’s biggest telco warns.
The telecommunications sector will be essential to supporting the rollout of artificial intelligence but is being hampered by more than 500 pieces of legislation and regulation, Telstra boss Vicki Brady will say in an address to the National Press Club in Canberra.
Backing Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ push to remove unnecessary red tape and lift productivity, Ms Brady will urge the government to keep cutting away clutter and develop a national digital infrastructure plan.
Telcos had placed big bets on strong financial returns in deploying the capital-intensive infrastructure that drove the internet boom.
That included flying helicopters across the continent to bring in the materials and personnel required to build 3G towers and make mobile internet connectivity possible.
But as the industry embarked on the next phase of infrastructure build, like connecting Australia’s far-flung cities with a web of fibre cables, regulation was getting in the way.
To roll out 1000km of fibre between Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, Telstra has had to issue 3000 land access activity notices and 1128 construction certificates and complete 1723 land access surveys and 171 cultural heritage and environment surveys.
“This is all part of deploying infrastructure in a country as large as Australia, and there are good reasons why these processes are in place,” Ms Brady will say.
“But the volume of legislation, regulation and different requirements across states and territories has added significant cost and complexity.”
She supports the Business Council of Australia’s calls to reduce business compliance costs by a quarter by 2030.
“This would mean looking at what regulation may no longer be needed – like our obligation to publish and distribute paper copies of the White Pages.”
Not only did Australia need to get cables in the ground faster, it also needed to build out the “connectivity superhighway in the air” by opening up access to new bands of mobile spectrum, to improve coverage in the bush and enable the roll-out of 6G, Ms Brady will say.
But Australia was simply not building as quickly as international competitors.
On a recent visit to the US, Ms Brady was struck by the pace and scale of their digital infrastructure rollout – how much investment was being attracted, how fast approvals were getting through, how big they were thinking.
“I came away thinking we’ve got the get aligned and we’ve got to move fast if we’re going to remain competitive as a country,” she will say.
AI has the potential to almost double productivity growth over the next decade, but along with greater investment in data centres and renewable energy, Australia needs to involve the public to build trust in the technology, she will say.
Announcing Telstra’s annual financial results in August, Ms Brady revealed more than 20,000 employees had completed at least one course at the company’s AI academy and teams were considering how to implement AI in every job at the telco.
The company insists AI is being deployed to boost the skills of its workforce, not replace it.
Telstra cut 2800 jobs in the past financial year and plans to shed 550 more as part of a major restructure to its Telstra Enterprise arm, but it denied the changes were a result of adoption of AI.
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