Telstra CEO Andrew Penn has announced that the dominant Australian telco will inject an additional $500 million into upgrading its mobile network over the next two years in his maiden speech as the head of the company. The new investment will bring Telstra’s total mobile network investment to more than $5 billion over the next three years.
Penn delivered his first speech as CEO at the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) lunch today, and we reprint it here in full. Australians haven’t yet had the opportunity to hear him publicly speak since it was announced in February that he would over the top job from David Thodey.
iTWire received a copy of Penn’s planned keynote speech for the CEDA lunch, and while it cautions at the base of every page to ‘Check against delivery’, what follows below is the speech that Penn intended, at any rate, to deliver, with the topic being ‘Connecting with the future.’
Telstra is welcome to update us with any differences between Penn’s intended speech and his actual speech.
In addition, we also don’t get to see any videos that Penn may or may not have played at the event – but we do have the text, so please, read on!
Telstra CEO keynote: CEDA event – July 9, 2015 TOPIC: Connecting with the future
Good afternoon. In my first opportunity to speak publicly since becoming CEO of Telstra, I want to share with you our vision.
Our vision to make Telstra a world class technology company that empowers people to connect. That vision has three objectives.
Three objectives I intend to champion during my time as chief executive.
1. Firstly, to continue to put the customer at the heart of everything we do
2. Secondly, to deliver world class technology; and
3. Thirdly, to continue to have the best telecommunications networks in Australia and I will be announcing today we are increasing our level of investment in mobiles.

This is the vision that drives me. This is what we will be focussed on delivering at Telstra. And these are the three topics of my address to you today.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

I wanted to start by reflecting on the fact that in a period of incredible technological change, one thing remains more important than ever – customer service. Telstra has spent the last five years executing a transformation programme designed to put the customer at the heart of everything we do.

When David Thodey was appointed CEO in 2009 he declared himself agent of the customer – I make the same commitment. While we have made significant progress, we clearly have more to do. We still experience too many instances of failure – where we do not deliver everything we should, where we do not make it easy for our customers to be successful.

In a world where technology innovation is accelerating our customers need us to respond by providing simple solutions at even greater speed

A WORLD CLASS TECHNOLOGY COMPANY

And the reality is, the rate of technology innovation is accelerating. For some this is uncomfortable, even scary. However, far from being intimidated I see great opportunity. I am a technology optimist.

I see great opportunity for those of us that embrace this change, great opportunity for those of us that embrace technology innovation and great opportunity for Australian companies and Australia. Telstra is no longer simply a phone company – technology pervades everything we do. Our vision, my vision is that we now take this to the next level and become truly world class.

And let me be clear here, we are very mindful of where we are today. This is not a declaration, it is a statement of deep ambition. There are some areas where we are already regarded by our global peers as world class, such as network engineering and others where we need to do better.

TECHNOLOGY TRENDS

So what are the trends that are driving the technological innovation we are experiencing today?

I see three:

Firstly, a massive shift to mobile;
Secondly, the cloud; and
Thirdly, advancements in machine learning.

DESKTOP TO MOBILE

20 years ago there were less than 100 million mobile devices in the world. Today there are more than 5 billion.