Telstra pushes HD videoconferencing for productivity

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 13 May 2009 12:05

IT Industry - Market

Telstra is keen on productivity, and it thinks it can help its customers improve theirs as well.

"Productivity is incredibly important for Telstra," CEO-designate David Thodey said this morning, and suggested that IT can be the answer rather than the problem.

It isn't possible to get the productivity gains people seek just by working harder, he asserted, instead it is necessary to do things differently.

Thodey pointed to the way Telstra has used GPS and other mobile technologies to improve the productivity of its field staff by 50 percent. And the use of videoconferencing has reduced travel time and costs by around 30 percent.

Telstra must continue to transform the way it does business: "it's hard to keep going, but we've made a conscious decision that we must," he said.

Thodey was in Canberra this morning dealing with federal budget related issues, but he was addressing a Melbourne executive briefing by using the high-definition videoconferencing service that Telstra is promoting.

The company has partnered with Microsoft and Cisco to deliver a high-quality, high-definition videoconferencing service. A subsequent demonstration linked the Melbourne venue with executives from Microsoft in Seattle and Cisco in San Jose with no noticeable glitches in sound or vision, and excellent synchronisation.