Australia Post completes SD-WAN migration at 3600 retail sites

Australia Post has finished migrating all its retail sites across the country onto a new software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) and upgrading their internet connectivity as part of its massive telecommunications transformation program.

The milestone in the network stream of the project was revealed in a LinkedIn post this week, capping 23 months of workthat began with an initial pilot site in November 2019.

The network stream is one of four streams of work under the telecommunications transformation, which has been billed as the largest of its type in Australia.

Australia Post partnered with Comscentre (now part of Orro Group) to upgrade connectivity to all of its sites and connect them via a software-defined network.

The stream is also deploying wi-fi capability at post offices and other sites, which underpin emerging technology projects such as a planned rollout of ruggedised smartphones.

At the peak of the network stream rollout, approximately 100 post offices were upgraded within five business days.

General manger for technology Christina Chu told iTnews that Australia Post expects to complete the entire telco transformation program across all sites “by the end of the year”.

“We have successfully migrated over 99 percent of nearly 4000 post offices, delivery facilities and support offices across Australia to this new and more resilient data network,” she said.

She added that in addition to doubling internet bandwidth at each site and reducing outages by 70 percent, the program would “reduce operating costs by up to 40 percent for some services”.

Other streams of the transformation focus on communications and collaboration systems, contact centres and mobility and endpoint management, as explained in the iTnews podcast, and are in various stages of deployment.