Innovation and improvement for Telstra's Australian energy and cooling systems: A ten year case study

Telecommunications companies face relentless pressure from customers, competitors and shareholders for lower costs, better performance and better returns on investment. At the same time, these stakeholders and society in general have higher expectations of service and lower tolerance for failure of any kind. The arrangements between Telstra and Silcar over the past ten years provide an enduring case study of how to address these issues in relation to energy and cooling infrastructure. In 2000, Telstra Corporation implemented an innovative strategic arrangement with industry for work related to its telepower network in Australia. This arrangement enabled Telstra to retain control over its telepower assets and, at the same time, deliver transformed telepower organizational capability, better network performance and significant reductions to Telstra's costs. Business imperatives mean that critical network infrastructure required by a large asset intensive Telco must be delivered at the lowest practical cost. At the same time, development in telecommunications technology and new generation networks is seeing increasing dependence by the Telco business on complex power systems, interdependent cooling systems and similar infrastructure particularly in exchanges and data centers. Telco brand and revenue streams are becoming more vulnerable to failures of reliability in network critical infrastructure. Improving cost performance and the asset reliability required to meet the increasing dependence on energy and cooling systems can be achieved through: (a) an asset performance management focus guiding the selection and deployment of technology, network operations and maintenance (b) high reliability organization practices with positive engagement of a knowledgeable field workforce. A particular challenge is integrating the large volumes of data available from current generation technology and conversion into information that is coherent and meaningful for overall network control and decision making. The longer term future includes adapting telecommunications energy and cooling infrastructure to the threats and opportunities that are inherent in electrical distribution infrastructure. Issues such as stresses on ageing electrical transmission and distribution infrastructure present potential threats to telecommunications energy and cooling infrastructure. Developments in technology for control of and data acquisition from new equipment and legacy equipment offers exciting opportunities to address the future challenges.