Being ready for whatever a data-driven century brings

Do you use video conferencing in your job, at least a couple of times a week? Like many other people, I now use it constantly.

It’s got to the point where a business call without video almost feels a little odd. You can’t see other people’s body language or facial expressions, and now that we’re used to seeing, as well as talking on calls, that feels like something of a barrier to a full conversation.

But if we were talking in 2018, and I’d asked if you were regularly using Skype or something similar at work, how many people would’ve said yes? My guess: Not many. And that’s funny, because Skype is 20 years old this year [1].

That video technology we now use so often has actually been around for a long time - especially if you measure it in internet years. We all knew about it, but not many of us used it day-to-day. Until we did, and did in a very big, economy-changing way.

?Last year, almost a third of Australian adults worked remotely for at least part of the week [2].

Now more of us are back in the office more often, but hybrid working, in some form, looks here to stay. Yet back in 2018 the idea of huge numbers of people regularly working from home, enabled by cloud-based apps, fast connections, and intuitive video calls, would have seemed pretty far-fetched.

Framing the future

The point is that technology is always surprising us. The way it arrives, develops, and ends up being used can take surprising twists and turns.

But that’s to be expected. It’s hard to know what the future will hold because we can only frame it from our current perspective. Things tend to creep up on us, and then change very quickly.

A long time ago, someone at Kodak told me they thought that one day we’d all have cameras with SIM cards in them. Turns out that was true, but Kodak didn’t foresee that mobile phones would become most people’s cameras.?

Like Kodak, we tend to start out by imagining how we can do what we’re already doing, only better.

But tech evolves quickly now, and people’s expectations are changing at the same speed.? But what we know for sure is that our demand for insights, speed, and data is only accelerating.

This will be a data-driven century.?

Build a platform for success

So if we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, how do we prepare? One of the best things you can do is build yourself platforms for success.

That means, when it comes to technology, build yourself an infrastructure base that opens the door to success, rather than holds you back. Don’t build things in a way that’s going to limit what you can do in the future.

Here’s some key questions to ask to help ensure you’re keeping the door to future success open.

• Are your systems upgradeable?
• Can they scale up quickly if opportunity comes knocking?
• Are they reliable and secure?
• Are you all backed up and ready to go if disaster strikes?
• Are they good to use and empowering for your workers?
• Are your systems flexible enough to incorporate anything new that comes along?
• And, most importantly of all, is your enterprise culture built for constant change and opportunity??
• Are you, and the infrastructure your business runs on, ready to embrace new things?

Providing the infrastructure for a digital century

What's nbn’s role here? Put simply, our purpose is to lift the digital capability of Australia.

We provide a fast, reliable digital backbone that helps prepare the nation for the technologies to come, even if we don’t know exactly what that will look like yet.

And we need to do that in a way that works for individuals, businesses and communities right across Australia.

For example, while we tend to think of digital innovation as something that happens at home or work, technology can also help improve our public spaces. At nbn we’ve launched the nbn? Smart Places product [3]^ to cater to internet of things (IoT) applications, traffic lights, smart signage and public Wi-Fi*.

We’re expecting massive growth in this area. A recent IDC report commissioned by nbn [4] found that in 2022 there were 204,000 ‘non-premise’ locations in Australia, with 210Gbps of data traffic. But IDC predicts that by 2030, there’ll be a million locations and 4411Gbps of traffic - 21 times the amount of traffic that was generated last year.?

When COVID hit and everyone had to work from home, having access to the nbn? network meant Australia was in a much better position than some other countries, which didn’t find the transition to remote working nearly as easy.

But it wasn’t always like that. It's my personal belief that one of the reasons that video conferencing did not take off earlier, at least in this country, was that for a time, before the nbn network, our networks were often not up to the standard required to provide a good experience.

We can’t let situations like that arise again. Infrastructure shouldn’t hold us back. Instead, our digital infrastructure should be building the foundations for new opportunities.

For example, there are Catholic schools across Western Australia and Queensland [5] that are getting the full digital education experience for the first time thanks in part to the availability of the nbn network in regional areas in those two states.

For kids in schools run by Brisbane Catholic Education, bandwidth available to schools has jumped four-fold on a per student basis, to 1.7Mbps per student [6], thanks to those connections. BCE says the quality of digital education has been significantly improved.

Who knows what surprises this data-driven century has in store for those kids. If voice-based conference calls feel very old fashioned now, what is today’s tech going to feel like a few years further into the AI revolution? From our perspective, as 2023 comes to an end, it’s hard to predict. All we know is that there is going to be more data.

?But we know that by getting to use technology and see what it can do, they’ll be better prepared for whatever comes.

References:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype
2. https://www.finder.com.au/remote-working-statistics#:~:text=Quick%20summary,to%20work%20overseas%20in%202023
3. https://www.nbnco.com.au/content/dam/nbn/documents/business/fact-sheets/fact-sheet-nbn-smart-places.pdf
4. https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7118445259335888896/
5. https://www.nbnco.com.au/business/articles/connectivity-helps-digital-education
6. https://www.techbusinessnews.com.au/news/orro-completes-high-speed-network-upgrade-for-brisbane-catholic-education/

^ Smart Places: nbn is accepting applications for builds to non-premises locations in our existing nbn Ready For Service (RFS) footprint and new developments. Service connectivity availability will depend on internet providers offering nbn Smart Places, and timing of product availability will be at provider discretion.