Australia no good at hardware development: RAD boss

Stan Beer
Friday, 18 November 2005 11:00

Your IT - Home IT

Efraim Wachtel does not mince words. When he says Australia is just no good at producing hardware communications technology, he means it.

As the president and CEO of Rad Data Communications, Mr Wachtel heads up the key data communications arm of one of the largest technology groups in Israel. In total, the RAD Group comprises 14 data technology companies, most of which are hardware focussed. The RAD Group employs 3,000 people and in 2004 had revenues of US$540 million, with six of its 14 subsidiary spin-off companies listed on the US NASDAQ exchange.

Rad Data Communications, however, is a private company that provides services to all the other companies in the Rad Group, as well as providing telecommunications hardware to overseas carriers, such as Telstra, Optus ad a number of utilities.  “We have been working in Australia for the past 20 years or so,” says Mr Wachtel. “Australia has not developed competitive expertise in communications hardware. This is amazing to me and I could never understand it because you are a huge country and you have such great communications needs. There is a clear need to develop communications products yet the industry does not exist here. I guess one of the reasons is that you are very far from worldwide markets and you need to go overseas in order to grow.”

Wachtel admits that the expertise that Australia lacks and Israel possesses has also been incubated to a large extent by Israel’s military requirements. “We have a lot of employees who developed their skills during their military service and we have certainly benefited from that,” he said.

Of course, there is also the added fact that Australia, unlike Israel, is incredibly rich in natural resources. “You can just dig up coal from the ground,” said Mr Wachtel. “We can’t do that so we have no choice but to develop and export our technology.”