Session 1.8a Expo Session: The North: Australia's Front Line with only One Road in
Tracks
Open Session
| Tuesday, November 17, 2026 |
| 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM |
| Royal Theatre |
Presentation Outline
The 2026 National Defence Strategy sets deterrence by denial as Australia's military strategy, and turns the defence posture north. What has changed is the economics of attack. Distributed sensing, low-cost autonomous effectors and networked command and control have pushed the cost of a successful attack sharply upward. That is not a platform effect. It comes from connecting and fusing thousands of systems at the edge, which makes communications the enabling capability for denial, not a supporting service to it.
The same shift has moved targeting. Long-range strike now favours economic infrastructure over military attrition: refineries, ports, data centres and maritime chokepoints. That puts the north-west shelf, Australia's most concentrated undersea infrastructure, inside the defence mission.
Across northern Australia, communications is where the largest gain is available. Most defence sites are served today by a single carrier and often a single physical path. For remote-operated sites, a second and separate route is the difference between a capability that stops and one that keeps working. It is among the most affordable resilience on offer, and much is already built. Multi-orbit satellite adds paths rather than replacing them, since every orbit lands on a gateway with fibre behind it.
This presentation sets out where the capability opportunity lies, what terrestrial, subsea and multi-orbit satellite paths each realistically contribute, and the questions any organisation should ask before accepting a single-path communications position for a mission critical front-line. It argues for carrier diversity and redundancy as a design requirement, not for any one supplier.
Speaker
Mr Andrés Irlando
Chief Executive Officer
Vocus
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Biography
Andrés Irlando was appointed Vocus Chief Executive Officer in July 2025. Andrés has 20 years of experience in senior executive roles within the telecom and technology industries, with deep experience in technology and telecom investment strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and portfolio management. Prior to joining Vocus Andrés was President of Zayo Group, a large digital infrastructure company owned by private equity firms DigitalBridge and EQT with operations in North America and Europe.
He has led multi-billion-dollar business units and large employee teams at Verizon Communications, most recently as six years as CEO of Verizon Connect, a $1B fleet and mobile resource management Software-as-a-Service company with operations in North and South America, Europe, China, Australia, and New Zealand. While at Verizon, Andrés held a broad range of portfolios including President and Senior Vice President Public Sector, President Southwest Region, President New York Region, and Vice President Customer Service.
Andrés currently serves on the Board of Directors of Genuine Cable Group, a private equity (Audax Group) portfolio company. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of both Chapman University and Children’s Health Care of Atlanta.
Andrés earned a Doctor of Jurisprudence from Stanford Law School and a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College. He also served eight years as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve.
He has led multi-billion-dollar business units and large employee teams at Verizon Communications, most recently as six years as CEO of Verizon Connect, a $1B fleet and mobile resource management Software-as-a-Service company with operations in North and South America, Europe, China, Australia, and New Zealand. While at Verizon, Andrés held a broad range of portfolios including President and Senior Vice President Public Sector, President Southwest Region, President New York Region, and Vice President Customer Service.
Andrés currently serves on the Board of Directors of Genuine Cable Group, a private equity (Audax Group) portfolio company. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of both Chapman University and Children’s Health Care of Atlanta.
Andrés earned a Doctor of Jurisprudence from Stanford Law School and a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College. He also served eight years as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve.
