Critical Telecommunications Infrastructure: The Consequence of Outage and Actions to Mitigate Risk
Tracks
Southport Room 2
| Monday, July 27, 2026 |
| 1:20 PM - 1:50 PM |
| Southport Room 2 |
Overview
Nic Mesic & Peter Heinmiller, Value Advisory Partners
Details
Three Key Learnings
1. Collaborative investment: Resilience requires collaborative investment, as no single organisation has the authority or resources to fund comprehensive measures alone. Multi‑party models involving site owners, tenants, governments and communities create more effective and justifiable pathways than isolated efforts.
2. Cascading impacts: Telecommunications outages have cascading impacts across emergency response, healthcare, utilities, transport and commerce, and deep interdependence—especially with energy—means resilience cannot be built in silos.
3. Risk management and preparedness: While infrastructure hardening is essential, it cannot eliminate all risk. A balanced approach must also strengthen community capacity so businesses and residents can maintain essential functions and cope during inevitable disruptions.
Speaker
Mr Peter Heinmiller
Principal
Value Advisory Partners
Critical Telecommunications Infrastructure: The Consequence of Outage and Actions to Mitigate Risk
Abstract
Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, placing growing pressure on Australia’s critical infrastructure. Bushfires, storms and heatwaves are disrupting the systems that underpin business continuity and community wellbeing, particularly telecommunications, energy and data networks. These disruptions have cascading impacts across essential services and the broader economy.
Telecommunications are now central to how Australians work, learn, socialise and access emergency assistance. Recent Triple Zero outages have demonstrated the life‑safety consequences of telecommunications failures and highlighted the vulnerability of interconnected systems that support critical services such as banking, healthcare and emergency response.
Telecommunications networks are complex socio‑technical systems with deep interdependencies. They rely on energy and data infrastructure and, in turn, enable the functioning of supply chains, financial systems and emergency management. Strengthening resilience requires ensuring these systems—and the businesses and communities that depend on them—can prepare for, withstand and recover from climate‑driven disruptions.
While technical solutions such as hardening infrastructure are important, many of the most significant challenges are social, institutional and systemic. Fragmented governance, limited cross‑sector coordination, tensions between public and private value, and poor visibility of the indirect costs of outages all hinder effective prioritisation and investment. These barriers contribute to persistent underinvestment in resilience and weaken business continuity across sectors.
Addressing these challenges requires new models of collaboration that improve shared understanding of risk, support joint decision‑making and enable coordinated resilience investments across public and private sectors.
The Telecommunications Resilience Investment Pilot (TRIP) project brought together telecommunications asset owners, managers and investors, alongside governments and communities, to co‑develop practical tools and investment cases that strengthen resilience. By examining vulnerabilities at system and site levels, modelling outage consequences and identifying viable funding pathways, TRIP demonstrates how cross‑sector collaboration can enhance infrastructure resilience and support business continuity in a changing climate.
Telecommunications are now central to how Australians work, learn, socialise and access emergency assistance. Recent Triple Zero outages have demonstrated the life‑safety consequences of telecommunications failures and highlighted the vulnerability of interconnected systems that support critical services such as banking, healthcare and emergency response.
Telecommunications networks are complex socio‑technical systems with deep interdependencies. They rely on energy and data infrastructure and, in turn, enable the functioning of supply chains, financial systems and emergency management. Strengthening resilience requires ensuring these systems—and the businesses and communities that depend on them—can prepare for, withstand and recover from climate‑driven disruptions.
While technical solutions such as hardening infrastructure are important, many of the most significant challenges are social, institutional and systemic. Fragmented governance, limited cross‑sector coordination, tensions between public and private value, and poor visibility of the indirect costs of outages all hinder effective prioritisation and investment. These barriers contribute to persistent underinvestment in resilience and weaken business continuity across sectors.
Addressing these challenges requires new models of collaboration that improve shared understanding of risk, support joint decision‑making and enable coordinated resilience investments across public and private sectors.
The Telecommunications Resilience Investment Pilot (TRIP) project brought together telecommunications asset owners, managers and investors, alongside governments and communities, to co‑develop practical tools and investment cases that strengthen resilience. By examining vulnerabilities at system and site levels, modelling outage consequences and identifying viable funding pathways, TRIP demonstrates how cross‑sector collaboration can enhance infrastructure resilience and support business continuity in a changing climate.
Biography
Mr Nic Mesic
Managing Partner
Value Advisory Partners
Critical Telecommunications Infrastructure: The consequence of outage and actions to mitigate risk
Abstract
Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, placing growing pressure on Australia’s critical infrastructure. Bushfires, storms and heatwaves are disrupting the systems that underpin business continuity and community wellbeing, particularly telecommunications, energy and data networks. These disruptions have cascading impacts across essential services and the broader economy.
Telecommunications are now central to how Australians work, learn, socialise and access emergency assistance. Recent Triple Zero outages have demonstrated the life‑safety consequences of telecommunications failures and highlighted the vulnerability of interconnected systems that support critical services such as banking, healthcare and emergency response.
Telecommunications networks are complex socio‑technical systems with deep interdependencies. They rely on energy and data infrastructure and, in turn, enable the functioning of supply chains, financial systems and emergency management. Strengthening resilience requires ensuring these systems—and the businesses and communities that depend on them—can prepare for, withstand and recover from climate‑driven disruptions.
While technical solutions such as hardening infrastructure are important, many of the most significant challenges are social, institutional and systemic. Fragmented governance, limited cross‑sector coordination, tensions between public and private value, and poor visibility of the indirect costs of outages all hinder effective prioritisation and investment. These barriers contribute to persistent underinvestment in resilience and weaken business continuity across sectors.
Addressing these challenges requires new models of collaboration that improve shared understanding of risk, support joint decision‑making and enable coordinated resilience investments across public and private sectors.
The Telecommunications Resilience Investment Pilot (TRIP) project brought together telecommunications asset owners, managers and investors, alongside governments and communities, to co‑develop practical tools and investment cases that strengthen resilience. By examining vulnerabilities at system and site levels, modelling outage consequences and identifying viable funding pathways, TRIP demonstrates how cross‑sector collaboration can enhance infrastructure resilience and support business continuity in a changing climate.
Telecommunications are now central to how Australians work, learn, socialise and access emergency assistance. Recent Triple Zero outages have demonstrated the life‑safety consequences of telecommunications failures and highlighted the vulnerability of interconnected systems that support critical services such as banking, healthcare and emergency response.
Telecommunications networks are complex socio‑technical systems with deep interdependencies. They rely on energy and data infrastructure and, in turn, enable the functioning of supply chains, financial systems and emergency management. Strengthening resilience requires ensuring these systems—and the businesses and communities that depend on them—can prepare for, withstand and recover from climate‑driven disruptions.
While technical solutions such as hardening infrastructure are important, many of the most significant challenges are social, institutional and systemic. Fragmented governance, limited cross‑sector coordination, tensions between public and private value, and poor visibility of the indirect costs of outages all hinder effective prioritisation and investment. These barriers contribute to persistent underinvestment in resilience and weaken business continuity across sectors.
Addressing these challenges requires new models of collaboration that improve shared understanding of risk, support joint decision‑making and enable coordinated resilience investments across public and private sectors.
The Telecommunications Resilience Investment Pilot (TRIP) project brought together telecommunications asset owners, managers and investors, alongside governments and communities, to co‑develop practical tools and investment cases that strengthen resilience. By examining vulnerabilities at system and site levels, modelling outage consequences and identifying viable funding pathways, TRIP demonstrates how cross‑sector collaboration can enhance infrastructure resilience and support business continuity in a changing climate.
Biography
Peter's professional experience in complex data and analytics to unlock insights for clients in the areas of infrastructure planning and funding, precinct planning, transport options analysis, development scenario assessments, and economic strategy and frameworks. He has a deep understanding of the city shaping role of infrastructure and how its planning, investment and delivery can drive social, economic, and environmental outcomes to improve outcomes for people and their communities. His recent experience in disaster risk and resilience builds upon his prior infrastructure planning and investment knowledge to drive better, longer-term outcomes for communities in the face of a changing climate.
