(upbeat music)
[Text on screen] Telstra. Resillient service. Above, below and beyond.
[Text on screen] Everything you need to know about intent-based networking. All information accurate as at January 2026.
[Text on screen] Gaya Byrne, Head of Customer Success, and Wayne Lotter, Head of International Networks.
[Gaya] Hello and welcome, listeners.
I'm Gaya Byrne, Head of Customer Success with Telstra International.
And today, I am speaking from Singapore, having a virtual fireside chat with Wayne Lotter, our Head of International Networks.
Before we get started, being an Australian company, we like to acknowledge the Country of First Nations People of Australia.
While we aren't joining you from Australian soil, we do still acknowledge the importance of our Australian roots
and therefore I would like to begin in the spirit of reconciliation by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia
and their continuing connections to land, sea, and community.
We pay our respect to their Elders past and present and
and extend that respect to all Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening in.
We recognise their continuing connection to Country
and celebrate the diversity of cultures
and knowledges of Australia's First Peoples.
Wayne, it's wonderful to be having
this conversation with you today.
I've had the privilege of working with you
for about a year now,
and I'm pleased to be able
to share Telstra International's vision
of a connected future with our listeners today.
First up, I'll let you introduce yourself.
[Wayne] Yeah, thanks, Gaya,
and thank you also for hosting the conversation.
As you mentioned, I'm the Head of International Networks
and have the privilege of being
a member of Telstra International
and also our global networks
and technology group at Telstra,
particularly within our fixed engineering area.
And you know, I've had some amazing experiences at Telstra
over my many decades of being with the organisation
and really enjoyed all of those
and seeing the business grow and evolve in amazing ways.
And you know, here I am now in Asia working with you
and the rest of the international team
and really looking forward to today's discussion.
[Gaya] Thanks, Wayne.
Maybe a few decades in the business,
but probably not quite enough
to have been here when we laid our first subsea cables,
but I think you know quite a lot about this space.
So, can you tell us a little bit about
Telstra International's subsea network?
A bit about the history and the scale,
because I think it's really impressive.
[Wayne] Yeah, our DNA in networking, Gaya,
certainly goes back many generations
to some of those very early cable landings
in Australia on Bondi Beach.
And there's some amazing stories there from,
you know, over those generations Telstra International
and Telstra's overall network certainly has grown.
And within Telstra International we're present
across the key routes within intra-Asia,
connecting Asia to transpacific,
and also to Oceania and Europe.
Within intra-Asia, we would represent
somewhere around 30% of the internet traffic
and sort of, for example, through to transpacific
probably around 10% of that traffic.
So, a really critical player
and a leader in the APAC connectivity
and digital infrastructure industry
and supporting our customers in their growth as well.
And certainly, our level of growth that we have seen
has grown significantly the last sort of
three, four, five years.
We've certainly seen quite compounding growth, you know,
double digits in terms of the amount of capacity
that we've been delivering to our customers.
We've recently announced an additional 200 Tb
of capacity being added to the network,
taking us to somewhere around 800 Tb
of cumulative capacity in our network,
serving our customers across those routes that I mentioned.
[Gaya] Amazing scale and I feel so proud
to be working here.
Awesome, Wayne.
And you know, I've only been here a year,
but there's been so many exciting announcements
that we've made in the network space
and I know that you've been a huge part of instigating those
and your impact has been really immense.
So, I really want to get stuck into this, you know,
what is the big deal about the network?
Why now, why are we announcing this now
and why is it so important?
[Wayne] I guess, you know, networks have really been
a big part of our life for many generations
and they've been important in terms of, you know,
making our lives better
and also delivering growth in the economy.
And certainly, you know,
we are in a generational change right now
where we are seeing a material shift in the way
that networks are being used and the dependency on networks
and the digital infrastructure
that sits underneath those networks that, you know,
Telstra and Telstra International, particularly in APAC,
is one of the leading providers
of both connectivity and digital infrastructure.
And those demands have really come from
two kind of major shifts.
One is the shift overall to cloud services
and that's evolved.
Certainly, many of the listeners to this would be familiar,
that's evolved tremendously over the last decade or so,
but particularly, over the last five years
we've really seen that shift of workloads to the cloud.
And more recently, although it has been evolving,
is the use of AI and the demands that AI put on the network,
and particularly how that AI is also
being delivered from the cloud.
So, we've just seen this tremendous growth
with the convergence of cloud and AI
and then the use of those services
both in business and in consumer,
which has driven a need for infrastructure
to be available to kind of support that demand
and for that infrastructure to be available
fast, efficient, secure, and resilient.
And that is really what's driving our focus
and our strategy as we've announced
our Connected Future 30 strategy.
And in international we've particularly focused
in those pillars of a highly autonomous, secure network.
[Gaya] That's an incredible responsibility
that we have in that contribution.
And you know, I'm really always awed
by the way I hear you, Wayne,
and some of the other leaders in our business
talk about that digital infrastructure
that Telstra is responsible for
and that connectivity technology
that spans these immense subsea systems
and terrestrial fibre networks
across more than 30 countries.
In fact, Wayne, you're responsible
for a lot of that, so no pressure,
but I can't imagine having all of that on your shoulders.
You know, I think through doing that work,
you must have incredible insight
into how telecommunications providers need to evolve
to meet that proliferation in capacity demands
and what some of the other players
in the industry are doing.
That security, resilience, and performance piece
is just so important to our customers and what they need.
Tell us a little bit more about that.
[Wayne] Yeah, thanks, Gaya.
That's right, the scale that
we're talking about here is immense.
And, you know, as mentioned earlier,
Telstra International and Telstra
is a key provider of connectivity infrastructure services
and one of the leaders in APAC
into transpacific into Europe into Oceania, of course,
and intra-Asia itself with a footprint
that is over 400,000 km of subsea cable worldwide
that we either own or operate
as being one of those key metrics.
And certainly, we are present in over 30 key hubs
in providing that network.
Now, of course, the industry has gone
through great evolution
and service providers and operators and telecoms
have built those networks over time.
And we've reached a point now in the industry
that there's strong recognition of the need
to really simplify both the topology of the network -
so the way that the network is architected
in terms of its routes and destinations -
and also the platforms that support the delivery
of those services through that topology.
And particularly, there's a really strong focus
on topology simplification and platform simplification
as the basis and the foundation for a secure, resilient,
and the pathway to a highly autonomous network.
And the reasons for that is that simplifying,
removing variants, standardising,
first of all, removes the complexity of the network,
makes it easier to automate
and make that network ultimately autonomous.
And also removing variants and
standardising reduces the risk of impact
and increases the resilience of the network.
So, those are all really pathways to AI and cloud services,
which I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit more shortly.
[Gaya] Thanks, Wayne,
because when I think about some of those networks
and they were built, you know, almost 40 years ago,
and so, really the complexity
with which we would've had to build those
so different to the type of technology that we have today.
And so, it might seem simple to say, you know,
well, we'll just make things simpler,
but in my experience,
certainly when you're dealing with older technology
and really trying to take it into the future,
that's anything but simple.
And it's massive physical infrastructure,
critical industry customers.
We can't afford to take any of them offline.
Their businesses are going to continue to need to grow
and move at a really fast pace.
There's all this integrated technology
that's all codependent
and then there's this huge layer of regulatory compliance
spanning multiple different countries.
You know, when you and your team think about
how do we start this program, where do you begin?
[Wayne] And that's really the art to it
is having that right structure around that
sort of set of priorities and programs.
So, you know, our journey has definitely started with
strong sort of alignment with the business strategy
and the business priorities that have taken us really
to a program of work that is further transforming
and modernising our network.
By the nature of what we do in serving those cloud services
and those AI services for both our wholesale customers
and our enterprise customers,
we really started the foundation
at the infrastructure layer,
which is typically been a very physical layer
that is less flexible to customer demand.
And we've started our journey there
in what we refer to as cloudifying
that infrastructure layer,
which is working with our key technology partners,
both Ciena and Nokia, to decouple the software
from the infrastructure hardware layer,
which really enables us to make something
that is very physical behave like a cloud-like service.
So that way it gives us greater levels of flexibility
and enables us to adjust those services
and the amount of capacity that's available
to customers in particular locations
in a more flexible and efficient way.
Of course, that's kind of the infrastructure layer
and as importantly, we've been, as I mentioned earlier,
simplifying the layers that sit on top of that
by minimising the amount of variance of technology
that we need that interact with that infrastructure layer.
So that platform layer is becoming simplified
and is also being driven in a much richer way by software.
And you know, as part of that
we are modernising our total tool chain
that controls the network, making those more API available
so that we can make those services more easily available
to our customers and also internally
in the way that we manage and run the network.
The one point that was really interesting that you made
was around the kind of regulatory
and the supply chain around all of that.
And that is certainly part of that,
that art or that magic that's required to get that right
and proudly, you know,
we've really focused on responsible business
and how we work across all of our hubs and locations
with the regulatory groups there to ensure
that we're aligned with those requirements
and supporting that level of compliance
that's necessary to be flexible in the marketplace.
Our supply chain, you know,
really mentioned our two technology partners,
but it really goes beyond that.
It's sort of the entire stack of our network
and an integrated supply chain
and how we, again, manage that very carefully
and ensure that, that really delivers to us
that level of resilience and security
we commit to our customers.
[Gaya] Thanks, Wayne.
And so, as I hear you talk,
I'm thinking about three really critical outcomes
that you and your team think about
when you define network excellence,
and that's I think resilience, reliability,
really robust security and then that flexibility
to meet evolving connectivity needs.
And I think in the way that you're doing that,
what I'm hearing you saying is
we're really architecting an autonomous network basically,
for it to be flexible enough to meet customers' needs
and for us to have less and less intervention
in our network's ability to do that.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
[Wayne] There's really two principles
that we have in mind.
The first one is that we are using the AI
and machine learning and other autonomous capabilities
within the network, within the architecture of the network,
to make the network, as you mentioned, resilient, secure,
and also to be able to deliver capacity
to our customers when and where they need it
through that cloudification that I mentioned earlier on.
The other aspect of that though is that our customers
want to have access to those rich characteristics
that are available in the network
to integrate those with their own capabilities
and deliver AI services in their own business.
So, we are also, as mentioned earlier,
enriching the way that our customers will be able
to get access to the characteristics of our network
and the capabilities in our network.
So, it's really AI in the network,
machine learning in the network within the architecture,
and then also making that available effectively
so customers can run AI on the network
together with other sort of services
that they might use in the cloud.
So, integrating that together is really
what is going to make a difference to our customers
and meet those objectives that you mentioned.
[Gaya] This conversation is actually called
"Everything you need to know about intent-based networking".
So, tell me a little bit about intent-based networking.
What is intent-based networking
and how is Telstra International leveraging it
to transform network ops?
[Wayne] Yeah, now this is definitely an area
that there are many perspectives and views on,
so I will share mine
and certainly, Telstra as part of
its Telstra autonomous network strategy
has been putting a lot of thought into this
and our architecture groups within global network
and technology has certainly been leading
in terms of the contribution in the industry
around this level of thinking.
So, as a perspective,
intent-based is really looking at
what is the intent that the customer is looking for?
What outcome is the customer looking for?
So, in the simplest form that intent,
maybe I want a service that connects
my regional data centre to my global data centre
and I want that service to perform
and operate in a certain way.
Now, you might want to expand on those intents and say,
at a particular point in time,
I want additional resilience, I want additional bandwidth,
I want a different cost structure.
There may be many intents that may surround
that simple intent of, hey, I need a network,
I need a network connecting two points.
Now, traditionally, to get to that outcome,
you'll go through a kind of sequential value chain
with many handoffs, with order forms and sort of designs
and it would be manually configured in the network.
When we shift to something that's intent based,
we move to more of a natural language way
of interacting with the network
and that natural language can define
what the network needs to do
and the network works out for itself
how to provide those services and provide that outcome
and possibly roll back that outcome,
possibly change how that outcome is achieved
with the same outcome.
So, that intent is a natural outcome that's prescribed
and the network takes care of the logic
in how that is delivered based on the policies
that have been defined by the engineering teams
and the kind of business requirements.
So, it's a really exciting shift for the industry
and for really for the outcomes in the economy
to get to this level of networking sort of outcomes.
So, really excited about this
and we see clear pathways to this approach to networking.
[Gaya] Incredible, and I think a little more
as this becomes such an important part
of really mission-critical applications
for all of our customers, you know,
particularly ones that are running the way
lots of communities around the world live and work
and interact with each other.
That resilience piece becomes so important,
especially if we're going to think about
intent-based networking as the way we serve our customers.
Tell us a little bit more about
how we're thinking about resilience
and how we deliver that for our customers.
[Wayne] We're really thinking of a key kind of use cases
that are really important to
what our customers expect from a network
that's highly secure and resilient.
And the first sort of use case is,
again, sort of being able to predict and avoid incidents
by ensuring customers have capacity available that to them
that can adapt to particular network situations
that may be as simple as a fibre cut,
may be as simple as unanticipated congestion in the network.
The network can adapt and that incident
is avoided for those customers and effectively
an intent that is set within the network to do that.
Of course, the second sort of primary thought is
that in some cases that may not be avoidable
due to a physical situation that may require us
to offer the customer alternatives
and be able to, again, offer that in a intent-based way
where a customer can very quickly choose their alternatives
and be able to minimise the impact to their business.
So, you know, traditionally these types
of restoration procedures could take hours, could take days,
and you know, we hear this concept
of self-healing networks and self-healing capabilities
and certainly, that's the direction we're taking
with our customers to ensure that, you know,
those mission critical apps and the ability of scale
that they need and capacity
is really there when they need it, where they need it.
So, that evolution is certainly,
the outcome we want to get to, Gaya
and that's, you know, what the expectations are
that we set that level of maturity to get there
and invest to get there.
[Gaya] Absolutely, Wayne,
that challenge of speed and scale
and making sure that as much of it
is as autonomous as it possibly can be
so that the logic is working
for the customer in real time really critical, isn't it?
So, Wayne, you know, I think until a couple of years ago
everyone was talking about digital twins.
I know we've kind of moved onto agentic AI,
but digital twins are a really interesting
and useful part of the way we're going
to roll out our autonomous network
and I really wanted to understand
a little bit more about that.
[Wayne] In the context of a resilient and secure network,
a digital twin is really imperative.
So, if we think about, you know,
the intent-based approach that we mentioned
and you know, the network being able to execute that intent
through policies that have been defined
and the logic is flowing in the network
and the network can even work out
when to roll back things and change things.
Now, that's fine if you're talking about one service
and nothing else changing,
but of course, you know,
there's thousands and thousands of services
that are operating in the network at the same time.
So, the digital twin has a real blueprint, a simulation,
a detailed, fine-grained simulation of the network,
allows us to run those changes
real-time into the digital twin,
see what the consequence of those changes are,
and then they can be played back into production
and calibrated through the digital twin and production.
And therefore the confidence in the execution
of those intent-based requests,
that are logic run by the network based on human policy,
that confidence puts us in a place that
where we can meet those commitments
to that level of resilience and security that we spoke about
and that, hey, the changes we're making
don't create vulnerabilities,
because the digital twin has told us that they don't.
Hey, they're not going to collide with other changes,
because the digital twin has given us
that environment to test that in.
So, you know, there's been a lot of talk about digital twins
and kind of analytics,
but this is the real-world sort of interest in that
and we're certainly been progressing.
We've mentioned previously in some of our communications
that we are framing that around inventory.
We're working, we're using the Blue Planet platform
as the foundation for that, that will enable us
to shift that digital twin
alongside the whole autonomous production network.
So, yeah, definitely a key pillar of what we're doing
and what the industry is looking at
is the benefits of digital twins.
It goes further than that.
It can give you the level of depth
into your facilities, into your fibres,
but that's probably one relevant example
around resilience and security.
Really exciting space, a whole space for itself.
A whole new podcast certainly on that one, Gaya.
[Gaya] Can't wait to record that one with you, Wayne.
I'm just kind of picturing engineers in your team
running around a sort of sim city type simulation
of our network, and that's really cool,
but such an important thing for us to be doing, you know,
really testing what could happen in the real world
without the risk of really impacting customers
and impacting their operations and being really clear about
what we're doing before we actually do it.
So, what an incredible piece of technology
for us to be using and really great to see it
come to life in the telco sector as well.
We've been hearing about it
in so many other sectors for so long.
So, what I'm piecing together there
from all of the stuff that you're saying is that
we're making a really fundamental shift
from being really hardware-centric
to being really software-defined
in the way we're managing the network
and really cloudifying that environment.
And in the process we're really simplifying our operations
throughout the infrastructure.
I've heard you say we're re-imagining
our network architecture with AI
and machine learning at the core
and enabling really autonomous operations,
that predictive maintenance, real-time optimisation.
And then you said we're moving to intent-based networking,
allowing customers to really specify desired outcomes
and almost design the network
that's going to work best for their business
and what they need to achieve with their business.
That's a lot of change.
How do we measure that progress
and how do we know we're really hitting the mark?
[Wayne] Gaya, that's a great question
and certainly, in terms of the journey
that we're taking in cloudifying the network,
simplifying the platforms and topology,
and modernising that tool chain,
we certainly have really strong disciplines
around those milestones, those investments
in how we're doing that.
But ultimately, you know, mentioned earlier,
Telstra as part of its strategy,
Connected Future 30 strategy,
has set a target using the TeleManagement Forum
Autonomous Network Maturity Model,
getting to the right level of maturity
and progressing towards that.
And fundamentally, there isn't a finish line,
but you know, as mentioned we've got those
really clear measures on the roadmap
of the level of maturity that we expect
to achieve on certain use cases
based on our program working on investment plan.
So, really moving from manual to some of those use cases being automated
to some of them becoming more highly autonomous
and then really getting to that point
that I mentioned earlier on around that intent-based
and kind of the production,
the digital twin working together
to an outcome that is based on policy.
That's where we're mapping ourselves out on.
We're targeting to reach level four as our milestone,
but you know, the finish line's going to keep moving,
because the industry requirements, our customers' needs
and just the economy and the growth that we're seeing,
you know, the tremendous growth that we're seeing
in the use of AI and cloud.
And we've really just started,
like we haven't seen the full potential yet
of what AI's going to deliver and the level of response
that we're going to need from the network.
So, really excited about that
and certainly, you know, that step-by-step journey
is really something that we're collaborating
really tightly with across the industry.
And mentioned earlier the global networks and technology
within Telstra's architecture and engineering groups
have been really at the forefront
of that whole movement towards a fully autonomous network.
[Gaya] Wonderful, and I think my understanding of those stages is, you know, with our target of level four,
level four is a really significant milestone.
When we're at level four, the network's going to be largely self-optimising.
It can handle most operations autonomously, but there's still room for a bit of human intervention
and I think it's really nice for us to be able to have very clear measurable objectives that align to each of those stages.
Like, you know, I think what it means for our customers as well and the language that we use with them
that there'll be reduced network faults, they'll have an improved customer experience,
and the way in which we're using automation and AI to achieve those goals is really fascinating
for our customers, but also for our teams.
I know our teams get really excited about hearing some of this stuff.
And so, the question, Wayne, is what's next?
So, once we've hit level four, what happens then?
[Wayne] First of all, I got to say I'm super excited about those measures that you're setting
and you know, as a sort of executive of customer success, it's a thrill to hear that we're setting those measures
in terms of the lens of the customer and the needs of our customer and it's great
how we're really collaborating together on those outcomes and your sponsorship of that has been amazing.
So, look, I'm super excited, as I know everybody is, about where to next.
And you know, the really exciting thing about this is the coworking relationship between us as humans and technology.
You know, this is really the exciting piece about it is how do we as humans get the most out of AI
and how does AI become a coworker to us and are basically, a side-by-side coworker to make us more efficient
and ultimately, to make our lives better.
So, I'm really excited about this kind of human-centric approach to technology and how,
based on policy, AI can empower us to be even better and serve the industry, serve our customers, and together Tele grow the economy.
And, you know, for somebody who's spent their life in operations and service and technology,
that the benefits that this is going to bring to the accuracy leads to resilience leads to security leads to meeting customers' targets.
So, you know, the next 12 to 18 months we'll continue to advance our capabilities in this area.
You know, we're really focused on what's changing for our customers in terms of their data centre blueprints
and their architectures of their data centres changing and just sort of regional-to-regional data centres,
edge-to-regional-to-global centres, how we're continuing to evolve our network and our response to that for
both our enterprise customers who have particular needs and our wholesale customers where we support them in the delivery of that backbone and other services.
And again, our commitment to level four maturity is certainly an important commitment, but our commitment to getting to those outcomes of a network
that meets our customers' needs in terms of security, resilience, and of operating sort of in an experience that gives them capacity when and where they need it.
So, super excited, Gaya, about Telstra's commitment to this as well and our strategy taking us in this direction.
So this evolution will drive that operational efficiency that we spoke about.
It's going to enable our customers to deliver those digital services to their customers and really just positions that level of innovation
in the industry that we need and continues to support the evolving needs of our enterprise and wholesale customers.
[Gaya] Amazing. Thank you, Wayne.
I really like how we're thinking about how it works for our customers, but also their end users as well.
You know, really thinking about someone making a trade on a financial services website
or maybe even, Wayne, one of your daughters watching their TikToks at home and really how we're enabling that incredible consumption
of data all around the world.
So, Wayne, thanks for these great insights.
I feel really inspired and excited, like I think we're in this moment.
It's a once in a generation moment to really transform the way our network works
and the way it supports communities and businesses around the world.
And I for one feel really excited and really privileged to be able to contribute to that in some way.
And I know you do as well, Wayne, so what an exciting time and thank you for all the insight that you shared today.
[Wayne] Thanks, Gaya. Thanks so much.
(gentle techno music)
