ROUND TABLE Covid-19 53
Telstra Andreas Eriksson, head of Telstra Broadcast Services
As we prepare and respond to Covid-19, our number-one priority will always be the safety of our employees, and the employees of our customers and partners. Telstra has a well-established Business Resilience Program to provide effective response and recovery capabilities in the event of any disruption to our business operations. Our operations, workforce and facilities are located across a broad geography and, in most cases, our employees can work remotely. In Australia, Telstra has increased our workforce with 3,500 new temporary roles and has brought forward A$500m in capital expenditure into 2020 to accelerate our network expansion and investments in 5G. This is a very challenging time for the media and entertainment business, especially for live sports and new film and TV productions. In the short term, most of the live sports we provide services to have been either cancelled or postponed, with a significant negative impact to the industry and the freelancers and talent that support live sports production and broadcast. Telstra Broadcast Services has a diversified product and solution portfolio, so while we are experiencing a stop of all our live sports work, we are seeing a positive spike in other areas, such as video games and esports, Direct-to-consumer
(D2C) traffic, online and streaming services, and core connectivity and IP Transit and IP Peering services. While live sports and entertainment production has mostly halted, editing, animation and VFX studios are able to continue working on projects, and many companies have pivoted to working remotely and virtualising their production as much as possible. Telstra is providing additional connectivity, collaboration, cloud gateway, virtualisation and hosting services to help customers transition to remote ways of working. In the long term, we look forward to resuming our services to the live sports and special events business, while still supporting the industry acceleration to new technology and workflows as a result of the global pandemic crisis. The Telstra Broadcast Services team have come together during this crisis to support each other and our customers. We have had to think differently and be more flexible and open to new ways of working. Like many other businesses, we have had team members who are homeschooling their children during this time, or looking after their elders, as well as working a full-time job. Telstra has championed remote and virtual working for several years. We have the tools and support to manage our business, even with the restrictions the global pandemic has enforced. The industry has also come together to support new ways of working and innovating together, and to help those in the media, sports and entertainment business who are most impacted, such as freelancers and small business owners.
THE INDUSTRY HAS COME TOGETHER TO SUPPORT NEWWAYS OFWORKING
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