We’re used to the idea that power can be expensive when you’re running a lot of data centres. But we were slightly surprised that Telstra singled out lighting expenses in its annual results.
Lighting picture from Shutterstock
Telstra has a good year, with a profit of $4.3 billion. But the number that jumped out at us was an increase in “other” expenses, which rose $78 million to $2260 million. One big factor in that? “An increase in light and power costs resulting from our 4G rollout.” Telstra now has 5.2 million 4G customers, split between 3.8 million mobile phone users and 1.4 million broadband customers. (That’s a big number, though it’s less than a one quarter of Telstra’s 16 million mobile customers.)
Clearly, people working in dark exchanges or mobile towers would be a bad idea. But who knew that lighting would deserve a special mention as 4G grew?
Comments
4 responses to “Telstra Is Spending A Lot Of Money On Lighting”
Pity they can’t ship that offshore like every other bloody cent they used to spend in this country.
$2.26 billion. Really?
Yes, really.
http://www.telstra.com.au/uberprod/groups/webcontent/@corporate/@aboutus/documents/document/uberstaging_280884.pdf
Did they break out lighting as a separate cost, or was it all wrapped up under “Light and power costs”? “Cause if so, it sounds like power is the big item, not lighting.
Doesn’t look like they did in the report but you’re almost certainly right; this isn’t about lighting it’s about power. More 4G means more equipment, sites and datacentre space all of which would be power hungry.