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VOICE OVER: These people were just on the Sydney Harbour foreshore at one of the world's
biggest New Year's Eve parties. It was part of a national celebration that put huge demands
on Telstra infrastructure. From New Year's Eve to New Year's Day, over 90 million SMS
messages were sent. That's a lot of people connecting.
CLOVER MORE: Good morning everyone. Ah what a fabulous morning it is.
VO: On the morning before the Sydney party, when Sydney's Lord Mayor addressed the media,
planning had already been underway for well over a year.
ANEURIN COFFEY: It's incredibly... technically challenging event but also having a million
and a half people around the harbour brings another level of complexity when you're
trying to deliver digital services to those people.
VO: To meet the challenge of enhancing the experience, Telstra expanded its capacity
around the harbour. 12 existing base stations were upgraded for greater capacity. And three
optic fibre temporary base stations were installed in key locations.
Over two weeks the stations were calibrated and tested so they wouldn't interfere with
existing local reception. They were also remotely monitored through
Telstra's Global Operations Centre in Melbourne - with a Telstra service team on 24 hour standby
to fix any problems. CLOVER: it's a spectacular creative beautiful
event that goes around the world but it's also a really important community event for
the Sydney community. VO: For Telstra, the event wasn't only about
infrastructure. Telstra was a proud sponsor of 2012 Sydney New Year's Eve and worked
with the creative team at Imagination Australia. HEATH CAMPANARO: We felt we really need some
partnership to bring some new things to the table and we thought... it's all about connection
and... bringing people together and that's exactly what Telstra stand for.
VO: Telstra's input included the creation of the New Year's Eve smartphone app. The
app 'Map Page' showed vantage points and crowd updates. It colour coordinated with
the fireworks for four Telstra Colour Moments and allowed sixteen hundred user messages
to be projected onto the bridge pylons, making the New Year's Eve event interactive for
the very first time. HEATH: One of the other great things that
the app allows people to do is send 50 free SMSs to their friends at the stroke of midnight
Telstra will send all of those messages out on their behalf.
VO: This automated SMS feature helped Telstra manage the SMS traffic at peak times, allowing
more messages to get through. ANEURIN: Working with Telstra as an event
partner has allowed us to help users to actually engage with the event.
VO: At midnight, Telstra was ready for another New Year's Eve first.
VO: The harbour spectacle was broadcast to the world using high definition, live-streaming
on six YouTube channels and as the fireworks brought the people of Australia and the world
together, planning was already well underway for 2013 Sydney New Year's Eve.