“ IF YOU CAN ONLY DROP ONE SITE EVERY SIX MONTHS , EVEN IF YOU BUILD THEM CONCURRENTLY , YOU ' RE GOING TO END UP WAY BEHIND … WHICH IS WHY WE STARTED LOOKING AT SOLAR ”
EDGE CENTRES
“ IF YOU CAN ONLY DROP ONE SITE EVERY SIX MONTHS , EVEN IF YOU BUILD THEM CONCURRENTLY , YOU ' RE GOING TO END UP WAY BEHIND … WHICH IS WHY WE STARTED LOOKING AT SOLAR ”
JON EAVES FOUNDER & CEO , EDGE CENTRES
Australian trombone ,” says Eaves . “ If you send an email from one company to another in Grafton , that email boomerangs all the way to Sydney and back , like a trombone .”
All the data created and consumed in Grafton ( as well as other small towns where Edge Centres has purchased land , including Dubbo , Toowoomba , Mackay , and Hobart ) from emails to Netflix shows has to negotiate the country ’ s highly centralised network . In other countries , centralised hyperscale data centres serving the entire network isn ’ t so much of an issue , because the entire country might fit within a single latency zone . In Australia , where populations are massively focused around coastal cities , and getting from Sydney in the East to Perth in the West takes 42 hours by car or six on a plane , latency is more of an issue . “ All the Netflix in Australia is consumed from Sydney ,” Eaves elaborates . “ That means that , if you ' re in Western Australia - which is six hours by plane away from Sydney - your video is still streaming out of Sydney .”
The result is national digital infrastructure that is woefully unprepared for the impact of Industry 4.0 , 5G , and the age of the Internet of Things ( IoT ). In 2019 ’ s global internet index rankings , conducted by Speedtest , Australian internet ranked 68th in the world , a full four places behind Kazakhstan . However , Eaves explains , regional edge infrastructure will be the vital step towards bringing data “ as close as possible to eyes on glass ,” adding that “ As these edge facilities start coming online , the service providers that currently can ' t get a foothold in regional areas - because the facilities themselves don ' t exist - are going to be able to expand .”
However , rolling out 20 edge data centres across regional Australia and beyond isn ’ t a straightforward undertaking by any measure , and the process got a lot harder in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic . In overcoming these challenges , however , Eaves explains that Edge Centres hit upon something truly revolutionary . businesschief . asia 23