Telstra expects that it will serve more wireless broadband customers than fixed line within six years. CEO David Thodey told the company’s annual Investor Day that by 2015, 60% of its broadband subscribers would be on Next G wireless connections – and added that fixed line networks will need to become ‘smarter’ to remain a competitive differentiator.

“Today we have one million wireless broadband customers, and we have two and a half million or thereabouts fixed broadband customers. We still see tremendous growth in the number of subscribers, but our personal views is that about 60% of those broadband customers will be wireless in about 2015,” Thodey said.

“We think wireless broadband is a compelling proposition... it is exactly the same experience as with fixed telephony to mobile phones, we see the same characteristics playing out in the broadband market.”

“We remain very confident and we are very encouraged about what growth we see in wireless,” he said, with the company’s mobile revenues now greater than PSTN. “21 million users in Australia, but if you look across the world all the predictions we see is that the number of subscribers on the wireless networks will continue to grow very, very strongly, [including] machine-to-machine, new PDAs, new wireless access devices become available. We see very strong growth in [services in operation] and increasing usage.”

Machine-to-machine wireless already accounts for $100m in business for Telstra, with Telstra products GMD Holly Kramer saying the company wants to see a SIM card in “anything that moves or doesn’t move.” FIXED NETWORKS MORE THAN JUST PIPES: Thodey said the company’s focus for its fixed network was on network intelligence – meaning more ‘cloud’ based applications. “We are seeing the growth of the intelligence in the core network... the nature of networks are changing,” he said. “Physical access used to be the point of differentiation – it will not be in the future, it must move to the intelligence and the capability within the core network because that is what people want.”

“We need to design these networks for enormous growth... the packets on our Next G wireless network are doubling every 14 months, and the traffic on our [fixed] IP network are doubling nearly every 18-20 months,” he said. Thodey said that Telstra was well prepared for network growth, with its own fibre lines already traversing the country. “[Telstra has] 5,000 exchanges, 6 million kilometres of fibre already in Australia – and if you don’t know what 6 million kilometres of fibre means, you can... go up to the moon and back again six times. That’s a lot of fibre across Australia... and that’s our fibre.”