The weekday briefing on Australian telecommunications, data centres and AI infrastructure.
Today's briefing
Saturday 24 October 2026
Power is the constraint shaping Australian data centre plans.
A Bloomberg review found fewer than a quarter of more than 40 large Sydney and Melbourne projects have publicly confirmed electricity or a grid link, while Victoria's action plan expects new facilities to back their load with new renewables and storage.
In Wagga Wagga, IREN's proposed 900 MW campus adds to resident unease over CDC's separate $15 billion proposal.
Nbn co. and Victoria will fund a $133 million fibre upgrade for 19,000 premises.
A Bloomberg review found fewer than a quarter of more than 40 large data centre projects around Sydney and Melbourne have publicly confirmed electricity or a grid link. The projects carry more than A$100 billion of planned investment and face grid limits and resident opposition.
IREN has proposed a 900 megawatt data centre worth more than $10 billion at Gregadoo near Wagga Wagga, as residents react to CDC's separate $15 billion, 1.4 gigawatt campus. Around 120 people attended a community meeting, and Wagga Council has voted to negotiate a land sale to CDC.
A $133 million partnership between nbn co. and Connecting Victoria will move more than 19,000 homes and businesses in 70 regional Victorian communities from fixed wireless to fibre to the premises, with all locations due to be ready to connect by December 2030.
InterContinental Energy wants up to 300MW of IT capacity at its East Pilbara renewable project by the end of 2029, with a final investment decision targeted for the first half of 2027. It has not said whether talks with AI compute partners have produced commercial commitments.
Developers appealing a council refusal of a 16-megawatt gas power station in the NSW Southern Highlands told the Land and Environment Court it would stop running on gas as soon as grid power is available. The council argues grid supply was never properly investigated.
Aussie Broadband told its AGM that FY27 underlying EBITDA is still expected at $205 million to $215 million, with more than 193,000 broadband connections added so far this financial year and the AGL migration due to wrap up in October.
Telstra says a planned upgrade to its Telstra Order Exchange platform has caused ordering problems for some enterprise customers, with staff processing requests manually. The telco has not said how many customers are affected or when service will be fully restored.
Swoop Holdings has signed a binding deal to sell its Sydney fibre to Xenith for roughly $4.5 million, the second fibre disposal to the same buyer this year. The sale needs FIRB approval and is due to complete in the third quarter of FY27.
Optus is using Confluent's Oracle change data capture tooling with Kafka to feed 400 tables from legacy customer applications into Databricks in near real-time, cutting data preparation for leadership from days to hours.
Victoria's Sustainable Data Centre Action Plan, released on 22 September 2026, expects new data centres to back their electricity use with new renewables and storage and to pay for the network upgrades they trigger, according to law firm Mills Oakley.
1414 Degrees has closed its purchase of Vast Solar Aurora Pty Ltd and now holds the whole 16 km² South Australian site. The proposed 140 MW battery and a possible 1 GW data centre still lack binding commercial commitments and financing.
Capricorn Space has 20 antennas running at its Australian Ground Network – West site in Western Australia and plans a second parcel of almost six hectares, plus more power capacity.