Telstra's innovative Next G™ network and its commitment to energy conservation were awarded at the national Communications Alliance and CommsDay Awards 2008 (ACOMMS) in Sydney last night.

Telstra - the only multiple award winner – won two awards:

• The Industry Leadership Award – Innovation for a Large Company for its Next G™ network;
• The Environmental Responsibility Award for the range of energy-saving initiatives integrated into Telstra’s business processes.

The Partnerships for Growth award was won by Alcatel-Lucent for its strategic relationship with Telstra.

The Awards, which are managed by the peak telecommunications industry body the Communications Alliance and the national telecommunications publication Comms Day, attracted a record number of high-quality entries in 2008.

Anthony Goonan, Director Wireless Fundamental Planning accepted the Industry Leadership award for Telstra.

“From the day we switched it on, Telstra’s Next G™ network has been changing the wireless game and I take this Industry Leadership award for Innovation as testament to the impact the Next G™ network has made in Australia and around the world,” Anthony said.

“We have a proven commitment to innovation reflected in the resilient architecture of our Mobile Switching Centre servers, the world first activation of 3G Direct Tunnel technology to increase our data capacity and testing of Blade Cluster to simplify our network and lift its efficiency.”

Vito Chiodo, Director Telstra Property accepted the Environmental Responsibility award on Telstra’s behalf.

“With a portfolio of approx 14,500 properties and a workforce of about 36,000 employees working across the country we are in a unique position to conserve energy hence reducing our carbon emissions and saving water in innovative ways” Vito said.

To that end the Telstra Environmental framework has concentrated on driving improvements by adopting an energy and water management conservation plan that works into the business processes and engaging with all stakeholders.

“The benefit of this approach has achieved carbon emission reduction during 2006/07 in the order of 38,826 tonnes This is comparable to removing more than 8,000 cars from our roads for one year,” Vito said. We also reduced our water consumption by 87 million litres equivalent to 35 Olympic size swimming pools.

Speaking at the awards ceremony last night, Communications Alliance chief executive Anne Hurley said the industry had moved away from developing very high-end technical solutions for technical problems – to an industry focused on providing customer with products and services that affect the day-to-day lives of consumers.

Telstra Wholesale was a principal sponsor of the event.

Learn more:

• Award winning Next G™ network (www.telstra.com.au)

Media release:

• The ACOMMS: Communications Alliance & CommsDay Awards - 2008 Winners (www.slatteryit.com.au)