GigCity and beyond: Adelaide’s high speed, startup revolution

GigCity and beyond: Adelaide’s high speed, startup revolution

Terry Gold, Techstars Adelaide

 

While Silicon Valley was known as the only place where startup dreams were made, gone are the days when being based in the Bay Area - or even the United States - is necessary to become a successful tech company. Now, location is no longer number one. Getting a startup up and running is more about having a great team, a unique idea, the right contacts, and a high-speed internet connection.

Adelaide is lucky to be a place where you can find all of those things. It’s undergoing a transformation. In the last six months alone, the South Australian government has announced that it plans on creating a digital gaming development fund, has established a giant lithium-ion battery in partnership with Elon Musk, and this week announced that its GigCity project has had 16 new innovation precincts added to it - one of which I’m excited to say is Techstars Adelaide.

GigCity makes Adelaide one of the most connected cities in the Southern Hemisphere. The first of its kind outside the United States, the $7.6 million fibre network is connecting key innovation hubs to internet speeds 100 times faster than the national average. Where the Federal Government’s National Broadband Network has encountered challenges and changes to its speed and delivery, GigCIty is already enabling South Australian businesses to develop new ideas, products and services and bring them to the world through the fibre optic Australian Broadband Research and Education Network (SABRENet).

Just before I moved to Adelaide in 2016, I was living in Longmont, Colorado. The city was in the midst of a gigabit fibre network install for businesses and homes. The network was Fibre to the Premises, and cost $US49 per month for a Gigabit for downloads and uploads. On my first visit to Adelaide, I was shocked to see download speeds of just 1.6 megabits per second.

But, even as a massive consumer of data, I gladly made the move to Adelaide, because I believed that the city had the potential to be a regional startup capital. It’s Australia’s leading smart city, recognised for its enviable infrastructure projects and technology, and is also home to the nation’s first Internet of Things innovation hub – Adelaide Smart City Studio. And it’s a beautiful city with friendly people!

The week I arrived here, the city announced its intentions to become the first GigCity in Australia. Initially connected to 14 innovation sites including Tonsley, TechInSA, and Hub Adelaide, applications opened late last year to join these great spaces in the second round of sign-ups. I was so excited to be told last week that Techstars Adelaide’s application had been accepted and that we’d be joining 15 other connection points in the next stage of the rollout.

So what does it mean for Techstars Adelaide? As a global network, having a smooth internet connection is vital for what we do. Our last accelerator attracted applications from startups in 49 countries. These startups wanted to come to Adelaide to take their products to the next level. They need to be plugged into the world, and that means fast internet. Being able to match upload and downloads speeds at a global level is going to be of huge benefit to us and the people we work with. It makes Adelaide an even better place to base your startup.

It’s a necessity for our future Australian companies of to succeed, and if they don’t get it here, they will go somewhere else.  Australia needs to keep investing in the future, and the Gig City project is a great first step towards that. Having fast internet is not about streaming Netflix movies, it’s about enabling new technology businesses and keeping them from having to move elsewhere to get the infrastructure they need.  Adelaide and South Australia have made a vital step forward to making this an even better place to live and create new businesses.