The IT Nerd

Telstra’s Finance and Strategy Executive Director Roary Stasko has been appointed as the new CEO of Telstra’s International business, starting 1 July.  

Telstra Enterprise Group Executive David Burns said he was thrilled to appoint Mr. Stasko, who brings a wealth of experience and passion for international markets, to the role. And he said that Mr. Stasko’s background in emerging markets would be invaluable in his new role.  

He said Mr. Stasko would start in the role on 1 July to ensure a smooth transition with current Head of Telstra International Oliver Camplin-Warner, who will be moving to head up the Telstra Purple business in the new financial year.  

Mr. Stasko said he was looking forward to working across the diverse portfolio of the International business, and exploring growth opportunities. 

Mr. Stasko will continue to hold his position on the Digicel Pacific Board, and will be based out of San Francisco, Ca. 

 Telstra has appointed Nitin Tikku as Vice President of Global Business Development for Telstra Americas, responsible for leading the company’s strategic business development and growth initiatives across the region and beyond. 

Tikku brings more than 20 years of experience to his new role, with a successful record of driving revenue growth, leading sales teams, managing strategic relationships and identifying high-potential new business opportunities.

Prior to joining Telstra, Tikku held technical and sales leadership roles where he successfully designed, secured and managed multi-million-dollar contracts with U.S. federal government agencies, global system integrators and Fortune 500 companies. Most recently, he held the position of Senior Director of Sales at AT&T, responsible for the business management and growth of one of AT&T’s largest customers, a global system integrator.

Tikku holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Drexel University, and a master’s degree in management of information technology from the University of Virginia.

Telstra has named Katy Greenfield as Vice President of Customer Solutions for the Americas. She will lead a specialized team working directly with enterprises across the region to develop customized network connectivity products and services.

In her new role, Greenfield will draw on a diverse background in retail, commerce, information technology and telecommunications with direct experience in network infrastructure, operations and logistics, product development and cross-functional project management.

Her career includes a range of technical and sales management roles, most recently with Boulder, CO-based Zayo Group as Director of Solutions Engineering. She will report to Noah Drake, President, Americas for Telstra.

Greenfield is a certified AWS Solutions Architect and holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Telstra has named Eric Dalessio as Vice President, Customer Service Delivery, for the Americas, responsible for driving digital transformation and business growth across the region while playing a key role in redefining the Telstra customer experience.

Dalessio takes on his new role at a time when customer expectations of a network service provider are higher than ever, in terms of response times, creative solutions and ongoing support. To meet and exceed these expectations, Dalessio and his team will work across the enterprise and wholesale business to identify new ways to onboard and use Telstra’s digital tools, efficiently manage service and delivery teams, and work with customers as a true business partner for long-term growth.

Dalessio has been with Telstra for 20 years, holding a range of leadership positions within the operations department and successfully managing several large-scale global projects to reinforce Telstra’s position as a leading network solutions provider.

Dalessio has a Bachelor of Science degree from the State University of New York at Cortland.

Telstra has named Steve Mundt as Vice President of Enterprise and Technology for the Americas, responsible for direct sales and new business development across the region.

Mundt takes on his new role during a time when Telstra is investing heavily to grow its network infrastructure and expand its connectivity solutions portfolio in the Americas and in key regions worldwide. 

He brings more than a decade of experience in telecommunications and global network services, most recently as Global Account Director for Media and Technology at Telstra. In that role Mundt focused on business development and key account management, designing, coordinating, and implementing large-scale global network infrastructure projects.

The Silicon Valley native will draw on his diverse background spanning content delivery, gaming, global transport backbone design, global IP transit network development and design, and latency-sensitive network optimization. 

Prior to joining Telstra in 2017, Mundt held sales and business development roles at global technology and telecommunications companies supporting enterprise, cloud and hybrid infrastructure initiatives.

Mundt studied at Sonoma State University and California State University East Bay, and currently serves as an advisor and mentor to students of the CSU East Bay Transformative Leadership program. In his free time, he is passionate about family, home improvement and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Telstra has expanded its business and service offerings in the Philippines with the launch of a new Point of Presence (PoP) in Pasig City, and the establishment of a new partnership with Converge, the leading pure fibre data network and internet service provider in the country. The expansion aims to offer more choice for customers and enhance connectivity into the Philippines, and within the country.

The new partnership, known as Telstra Converge Inc. (TCI, formerly ‘Digitel Crossing, Inc.’), is a joint venture with Converge Information Communications and Technology Solutions Inc. (Converge). It comes at a time when the Philippines has become an emerging hub of connectivity in Asia due to its increasing bandwidth demand and high growth potential, as well as its rapidly increasing attractiveness as a submarine cable hub. 

The joint venture, TCI, has allowed Telstra to build new terrestrial fibre routes between its East Asia Crossing (EAC) and City-to-City (C2C) submarine cable landing stations in the Philippines, as well as into Makati City in the Metro Manila region, the country’s financial, commercial, and economic hub. This expansion enables Telstra to provide quality end-to-end solutions for its customers. 

As the largest foreign submarine cable owner in the Philippines, Telstra also has access to two submarine cable landing stations in the country. They form part of the EAC-C2C network, which is the largest privately-owned submarine cable network, with a design capacity of 17.92 Tbps to 30.72 Tbps and a total cable length of 36,800 kilometres.

To ensure internet services are more accessible and stable for customers in the Philippines, Telstra has deployed a third PoP in Pasig City, a first-class commercial and residential city in the Metro Manila region, linking to the two existing, primary PoPs in Makati City. The new PoP enables Ethernet Private Line (EPL) services of 10G and 100G.

Telstra today announced that the first direct subsea cable to connect Australia with the U.S. will be ready for service in July 2022. The Southern Cross NEXT cable (SX NEXT) will enhance connectivity between Australia and New Zealand and the U.S., with branching units to Fiji, Kiribati, and Tokelau. Telstra is a 25 percent shareholder of the Southern Cross Cables Network (SCCN), the owner of SX NEXT.

SX NEXT will be the first single span express cable, and the first direct cable, to connect Australia to the U.S., making it the shortest subsea route. It is also the only cable that has landing stations in Tokelau and Kiribati in the Pacific Islands. SX NEXT has a four-fibre pair cable system capable of transporting 72Tbps, a remarkable addition to the current bandwidth and connectivity options linking Australia and the South Pacific Islands to the United States. The cable is built using up to 400G Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology and purpose-built landing stations, which will deliver high-speed connectivity and low latency between countries, as well as a resilient network infrastructure for the Pacific region.

When SX NEXT launches, it will lead to a major improvement in internet quality and internet penetration across the Oceania. Allowing different data streams to be sent simultaneously over a single optical fibre network will enable a higher data transfer rate and optimise network investment. As a result, the faster connectivity, stability and resiliency provided by SX NEXT will help accelerate digital transformation for businesses across the region.

There are 12 international submarine cables connecting Australia to the rest of the world, and the SX NEXT cable will be the third cable in the SCCN ecosystem. The SX NEXT cable is among the largest single submarine cable infrastructure projects in the world which spans approximately 15,857 kilometres along the sea floor. SX NEXT complements the existing Southern Cross and Endeavor-AAG cable systems in connecting Australia and the United States. The redundancy of the Southern Cross cables with SCCN creates seamless, efficient paths from Australia into Asia-Pacific, the U.S., and beyond.

Telstra has named Noah Drake as President for the Americas, responsible for leading the company’s future direction within the region. Drake will oversee all sales and business operations, playing a key role in further expanding Telstra’s portfolio of technology solutions and continuing to accelerate strategic partnerships. 

Drake takes the reigns during a time of rapid Telstra growth and network expansion fueled by increasing worldwide demand for connectivity and access to global markets.

He has a diverse and successful background in telecommunications leadership. Most recently, he led Telstra’s Customer Solutions and Architecture group, directing a specialized team of professionals working with customers to harness the full capabilities of Telstra’s products and services. 

Drake has more than a decade of experience in the international communications space, specializing in building best-in-class performing teams and aggressively scaling in high growth environments. Prior to joining Telstra, Drake was Vice President of Product Management at Boulder (CO)-based Zayo Group, responsible for the Fiber and Infrastructure portfolio of services. Prior to this role, he served as Senior Director of Global Reach where he was tasked with launching the company’s new market expansion team.

Drake holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder as well as a Master of Public Administration from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

Telstra is expanding its presence in the rapidly growing satellite telecommunications market, building and maintaining three new dedicated teleports across Australia to provide satellite gateway services for OneWeb in the Southern Hemisphere.   

The first of the new teleports, located in Darwin Tivendale, is scheduled to begin installation this month with go-live planned in July. Two further sites – Charlton Toowoomba and Wangara, Perth, WA – are planned for completion later in 2022. Each facility will provide turnkey ground station support for OneWeb’s growing fleet of low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites.

These facilities are being delivered as part of a 10-year deal between Telstra and OneWeb. Telstra’s turnkey approach for OneWeb includes designing, building and activating the teleports with ground station capabilities to meet OneWeb’s requirements.  Telstra will also provide 24/7 monitoring and quality assurance services at each location. 

Telco providers typically own and operate significant terrestrial and subsea assets, including fiber networks, IP backbones and data centers. These resources provide the critical ground service required to support satellite operators’ growing constellations, reduce their costs of entry into new markets and minimize the need for personnel to maintain their own terrestrial infrastructures.

OneWeb has two-thirds of its constellation launched and is providing coverage above the 50th parallel North – reaching areas that have historically been hard to connect with distributed communities and challenging terrain. This includes Alaska, Canada, and the wider Arctic Region. 

Earlier in March, OneWeb signed an MOU with Telstra to explore new connectivity solutions for Australia and the Asia pacific regions.  

Telstra Broadcast Services (TBS) has named Emory Strilkauskas as Head of Business Development for the Americas, responsible for expanding the company’s professional broadcast and media portfolio across the United States, Canada and Latin America. 

Strilkauskas will focus on strengthening relationships and developing new partnerships with international broadcasters, rights owners, channel partners and service providers. As part of Telstra’s ambitious growth plans for the broadcast market, he will also work closely with product, network and engineering teams to bring the best of Telstra’s innovative network connectivity and infrastructure solutions to customers across the Americas region. 

In his new role, Strilkauskas will draw on his diverse background covering broadcast, telecommunications and all aspects of live sports production. His 30-year career includes a Technical Emmy win and a successful track record of executing engineering integration strategies, developing solutions-driven technical workflows and managing complex system deployments.

Previously, he was managing partner of network operations for Brklyn-Media, a virtualized media company he co-founded to focus on camera-to-consumer cloud workflows and software applications. A majority of Strilkauskas’ career was spent with ESPN/Disney, holding a range of positions covering product management, programming, engineering, operations, transmission, contribution, affiliate distribution and direct-to-consumer offerings. He also served in the United States Navy as an Intelligence Cryptologic Technologist.