The weekday briefing on Australian telecommunications, data centres and AI infrastructure.
Today's briefing
Monday 26 October 2026
NextDC shares fell 41.7 per cent on Wednesday 21 October 2026 after grid upgrade delays at its M3 Melbourne site cut FY27 guidance and froze new projects, putting community opposition and financing risk in focus.
Macquarie strategists say the AI investment cycle is entering a harder phase, citing the collapsed Firmus listing.
AARNet has pushed its Perth–Singapore cable restoration estimate into mid November.
NextDC shares fell 41.7 per cent on Wednesday 21 October 2026 after delays to grid upgrades at its M3 Melbourne site cut FY27 guidance, froze new projects and raised questions about financing. Analysts say community opposition is now a real risk to the timing of contracted capacity.
AARNet has pushed back its restoration estimate for international traffic to Asia and Europe, with Indigo West repairs due to start on 25 October and ASC repairs on 3 November. Two subsea cables off Perth are affected, and customers are still seeing higher latency.
GreenSquare has switched on stage one of its SYD1 campus in Norwest, Western Sydney, after converting a building opened in 1995 in eight months. Sharon AI is the first tenant, with approximately 8,200 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs.
Green.com.au analysis of ABS building data puts data centre-related construction starts at $18.2 billion in 2025-26, with $18.3 billion of work still to be completed. NSW and Victoria account for most of it as AEMO expects demand to triple.
A Tasmanian parliamentary committee heard on Wednesday 21 October 2026 that consultants have approached north-west landowners about buying land for an AI data centre. The coordinator-general's office confirmed the proposal is at feasibility stage, and the government said no final site has been confirmed.
Singapore's IMDA has penalised Singtel after a chiller failure and a follow-on traffic overload disrupted mobile service on three days in March. The regulator found the outages were preventable.
Economists, former Tuanz leaders and an ISP body have told the Commerce Commission that pooling One NZ and 2degrees radio networks into Ranco would weaken competition. Monopoly Watch NZ backs the deal, and the Commission is due to decide by 23 November.
Malaysia is preparing a Digital Infrastructure (Data Centre) Bill, and ministers want developers to pay for grid upgrades and for power they reserve but do not use, with 27 approved projects carrying estimated investment of RM225.97 billion.
Canberra and the states are layering new requirements on data centre energy, water, land and air quality, and consultation on a tiered national AI infrastructure standard closed on 9 October 2026, according to consultancy PJRA.
The developers of MViSTA, a 16-fibre-pair cable between Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore and Thailand, are choosing between NEC and Alcatel Submarine Networks. A project executive put the cost at about $400 million and said Chinese suppliers were shut out of the tender.
Macquarie strategists say the AI investment cycle is entering a harder phase as developers lean on outside funding while borrowing costs stay high, with the collapsed Firmus listing cited as a warning sign.
Nvidia is reportedly discussing a fresh investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in Australian AI cloud operator Firmus, weeks after Firmus withdrew a listing that would have raised about $5 billion. The talks sit alongside an Information analysis putting Nvidia's support for neoclouds and other large customers at more than $170 billion.
A satellite ground station off Mannum Road at Murray Bridge North would link South Australian clients to the Telesat Lightspeed network via Vocus fibre. Public consultation on the proposal closes on 28 October 2026.