The Australian National University (ANU) is working on mapping Australia’s telecommunications resilience against hazards like fires, floods and other natural disasters.
At the beginning of this year, the Australian government released the 2021 Telecommunications Review, highlighting key failings in Australian communications networks. It was noted that the bushfires between 2019 and 2020 caused significant pressure for networks in regional Australia and that the pandemic put major pressure on the existing regional infrastructure.
Just days later, Telstra and TPG announced their network-sharing agreement for regional and rural Australia, hoping to address some of these blackspot issues by sharing their resources. $11 million was also put towards strengthening telco infrastructure against outages caused by natural disasters.
Now, ANU is conducting an Australia-wide review of telecommunications network resilience against hazards. This project aligns with the 2021 Australian Infrastructure Plan, led by Infrastructure Australia. It’s also taking on board findings from the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements 2020.
ANU will work with emergency services, governments, industry, utility providers, academics and disaster management services, all to profile the telecommunications sector.
“The 2019-20 bushfires, the pandemic, floods and cyber incidents are just a few examples of recent events that have tested the resilience of the sector,” the director of the ANU tech policy design centre Professor Johanna Weaver said. She will lead the project.
“By studying risks at the sector level, this project will equip future decision-makers with the tools to design effective policy that minimises disruption and improves the resilience of this essential infrastructure which Australians depend on every day.”
Case studies will also be studied as a part of the project. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic and how the communications sector was unable to keep up with network demand (when everyone was working from home and the NBN was under a lot of stress) will be studied. It’s likely that the 2019-2020 bushfire season and the floods throughout 2022 will also be studied.
Systemic failures of networks and ‘human-driven disruption’ will also come under review.
“The project will provide an independent evidence base to inform future Australian government decisions,” deputy secretary of The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts Richard Windeyer added.
“It will provide a valuable evidence base to increase the resilience of Australia’s telecommunications sector as a whole. It will be an invaluable tool for individual firms to prepare their own risk and resilience plans.”
You can read more about the project on the ANU website.