FEAR & GREED | Business News Q+A: Telstra’s AI strategy explained
Mar 12, 2026
Michael Ackland, Telstra CFO who leads investor engagement and finance strategy, outlines the company’s AI-first ambition. He discusses AI in customer service, using chatbots and generative tools to cut wait times. He covers data and staff training, infrastructure as a competitive moat, and ways to avoid over-capitalising while keeping vendor flexibility.
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Align AI To Strategy And Stay Disciplined
- Do align AI investments to strategy, not let technology become the strategy.
- Michael Ackland says Telstra aims to be AI first but uses disciplined architecture and vendor flexibility to avoid overreach.
AI Impacts Multiple Business Domains
- AI delivers measurable wins across customer service, network operations, and software development.
- Telstra sees reduced call handle times, network decision speedups, and faster internal coding from generative tools.
Experiment Broadly Then Concentrate On Winners
- Let many employees experiment but then focus on high-value use cases.
- Telstra gave broad access to co-pilot and ran an AI academy, then narrowed to customer engagement and network ops.