Interconnect World Forum 2024

The goal of Interconnect World Forum Sydney (IW) is to bring together the  industry's leading telcos, ISPs, IXs, TMT investors, government agencies along with key enterprise decision makers.  These stakeholders will consider key technology and investment trends and address best practices in terms of the connectivity of digital infrastructure.

Interconnection enables the seamless flow of data and information across networks, systems, and devices. It  is critical to the connectivity of any digital infrastructure ecosystem.

If connectivity cannot keep up with demand, there is no digital economy, no virtual gaming, chatting or meeting, and many of the technological advances of the past 50 years would remain little more than ideas. As networks, services and comms technology race to keep up with demand growth, telecom operators play a pivotal role in meeting the ever-growing demand for data connectivity from consumers, companies and cities.

The accelerating transformation of customer requirements means many operators face challenging investment, marketing and R&D decisions in order to remain competitive and profitable in the face of increased competition from over-the-top and tech players. The rollout of 5G will be the first in a series of major infrastructure investments.

• From being the undisputed core of the comms ecosystem, where do telecom operators now stand?
• What are the key business and tech strategies that over time will separate the winners from the losers?
• Most of the value created in the industry has been captured by so-called edge players—those manufacturing handsets, developing apps, building infrastructure, or providing streaming or other digital services. How therefore can telcos create a cutting-edge point of difference in their adoption and deployment of upcoming technologies?
• A recent PwC survey indicates that telecoms operators could be wasting up to $65 billion a year in capex. How therefore can the industry read key trends in future demand correctly to avoid waste on that (estimated) scale?
• Telecom operators own a variety of assets, including data and power transmission lines, passive telecom infrastructure, active telecom equipment, core and edge data centers, and they have adopted a number of different business and delivery models. Again, what works in terms of future asset strategy and what belongs to a past era?

At Interconnect World Forum, we will focus on these key issues that will shape the future commercial and technological future of telcos and thereby the future of the entire digital economy.