![Telstra ceo Andy Penn at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas looking at the latest 5G technology and speed tests ...](/content/dam/images/g/t/n/o/p/6/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gtnkex.png/1483945340935.jpg)
Andy Penn was one of the 170,000 attendees piling into the world's biggest technology event in Las Vegas over the past week.
The Telstra chief executive says his personal favourites out of the thousands of gadgets on show were new technology which translates brainwaves into electronic signals and a payments system which replaces passwords with facial recognition. He says one of the quirkiest products on display were vacuum shoes which suck up dirt as you walk around.
But the motivation for Telstra's decision to send some of its most senior people to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) goes well beyond checking out the "cool stuff" or looking for start-ups to invest in (although that is a possibility).
Penn has had to focus more on technology than his predecessor David Thodey ever had to. He is at CES is to get a better handle on the kind of technology consumers are going to be using in coming decades. After all, most of the products featuring at the tech fest, such as virtual reality, drones and driverless cars, will rely on telecommunications connectivity to make them work.
Connectivity has been a major challenge for Telstra over the past year. A series of network outages highlighted the growing reliance consumers have on the telecommunication giant's ability to deliver high-speed broadband for almost everything they do.
Penn has prioritised addressing the outages with a $3 billion program over three years upgrading its network and digitising customer services. Penn says if there is one lesson from CES it is that the pace of change and increasing reliance on technology is only going to increase.
Penn says he is not in Las Vegas to necessarily find new ideas to invest in directly but to get a sense of the role Telstra will play in an increasingly fast-changing world.
The transition to the next-generation 5G network will play a critical role in all this. Penn met with his counterparts at key global partners like Google, Cisco and Ericsson in Los Vegas. Telstra has partnered with Ericsson to develop its 5G network, which it will start trialling in Australia at the Commonwealth Games in 2018.
Penn says 5G will be the solution to address growing demand for more media, bandwidth and data, particularly when new technology like virtual reality becomes commonplace. It will also be important for the billions of devices such as sensors which will play critical roles in running homes, healthcare and driverless cars to communicate with each other.
"If we want to be a world-class technology company, we have to understand the way people use tech is very different than 15 years ago. There is no technology innovation that doesn't rely on the network," Penn says.
He says the low latency provided by 5G will be important to ensure the rapid transfer of data connecting sensors throughout the home, in medical devices, on farms and even on a Grand Prix racing track. Penn is excited by technology on display at CES which is changing professional motor racing through the introduction of sensors which feed data on everything from engine temperature, tyre pressure, speed, cooling and braking back into the pits while the car is travelling at 300km/h. Driverless cars were also a big feature at the show as they move closer to become a commercial reality.
Trialling virtual reality
Penn says he also spent time exploring new virtual reality technology and examining the opportunities this will also open up in terms of content. Virtual reality was not the big hit this Christmas that technology companies had been expecting but Penn says it is early days. Penn has been trialling some of the technology personally since last year when he dressed as a virtual fireman for a day, experiencing what it was like fighting a fire and carrying heavy equipment. As well as applications for training and disaster relief, Penn says the opportunities for entertainment and sport are huge, particularly through the company's partnerships with the AFL and NRL. He says the technology already exists to let users feel like they are actually in the stadium.
There has also been a lot of fuss around voice recognition, gesture recognition and devices such as Amazon's digital assistant called Alexa which responds to voice commands and has been a show stopper.
Drone technology has also been a big focus for Penn at the show. Telstra is backing calls for the government to relax regulations on the use of drones which can currently operate only within a pilot's visual line of sight. In its submission to a Senate inquiry into the commercial use of drones, Telstra argues it could use its network of 8500 mobile towers to monitor drones and avoid accidents.
Telstra currently has 12 qualified drone pilots which use them to inspect its communications towers but also to help out when there are emergencies. It also has a trial program with the "Little Ripper" drone program which uses them for beach patrols to help prevent drownings and shark attacks.
Penn says he is optimistic the Australian authorities will respond well to the push to ease up regulations around drones. It would not be the first time regulation has failed to keep up with technological change.
The case for drones
Telstra is not the only company pushing for this. Domino's Pizza boss Don Meij wants drones delivering his pizzas in Australia this calendar year. Like Telstra's Penn, he wants to be at the cutting edge when it comes to new technology but says Australia needs to establish the right regulatory environment or it will miss the boat.
"Things are moving so far in the disruptive world we live in now the public lives in fear often of the unknown," Meij told The Australian Financial Review. "The safest place on the planet is between 150 feet and 400 feet, there are only birds in that place. And there are parachutes and safety glide factors so they fall to the ground like feathers if anything does go wrong."
Meij also argues drones will create jobs rather than abolish them. "There isn't enough delivery people on the planet to deliver the amount of things that need to be delivered through the internet in the next two to three years."
Penn's other reason for attending to the show is to get the message out there that Telstra should be viewed as a technology company as much as anything.
Almost every new device on display will connect to smartphones and smart homes in the future and getting that right will be Telstra's next big challenge between now and 2020. For the immediate future, the impact of new technology will be less obvious. Telstra launches a new hybrid-modem in February which combines fixed and mobile networks, it will introduce new features on Telstra TV and will be working with its handset manufacturers on innovation.
For Penn personally, he is excited about the day when customers will be using Alibaba's payment system he tried out at CES which uses facial recognition instead of passwords. In other words, a customer can make a payment by smiling at a camera. He also got to try out new brainwave technology which let him move letters around a screen by thinking about it. Penn's "brainwave" is only the tip of the iceberg for companies like Telstra, though, as they try to figure out what customers will need in coming years.
michael.smith@fairfaxmedia.com.au
Twitter @MikeSmithAFR
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