by James E. Carroll
Telstra is raising its CAPEX forecast fy Aus$1.4-1.6 billion over the next 5 years for two newly announced infrastructure projects:
- Building and managing the ground infrastructure and fibre network in Australia for Viasat, a global communications company. This program will support the new ViaSat-3 terabit-class global satellite system as part of the 16.5 year contract. Each of the three global ViaSat-3 satellites are designed to offer over 1Tbps of total network capacity to deliver data and video streaming speeds of more than 150Mbps. Viasat provides broadband internet services to fixed, mobile and government customers globally.
- A major new fibre project to build state-of-the-art inter-city dual fibre paths. The investment will add up to 20,000 new route kilometres to increase the capacity of Telstra’s already extensive optical fibre network. It will enable express connectivity between capital cities up to 55Tbps per fibre pair capacity (over six times today’s typical capacity of 8.8Tbps per fibre pair) on routes such as Sydney – Melbourne; Sydney – Brisbane; and Perth – Sydney. The national fibre network project is a multi-year build which will commence at scale in late FY22 with early trial and test deployments already underway. Discussions with key anchor customers for the national fibre network are progressing, including with global hyperscalers, local telecommunications providers and construction partners.
Telstra expects to invest up to 70 percent of this total commitment across its T25 planning period, or an additional ~$350 million of capex per year over FY23 to FY25. There is no change to FY22 guidance, and Telstra plans to complete its on-market buyback in FY22 as previously advised.
Telstra CEO Andrew Penn said the two projects recognised the strength of Telstra’s network assets and were part of Telstra’s T25 InfraCo ambition to deliver profitable growth and value by improving access, utilisation and scale of its infrastructure. “Investing int these two trul significant nation-building projects will see us continue to have the larges inter-city fibre network in the country, helping to future proof Australia’s digital economy and further improving connectivity in regional Australia.”
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