Pinned straw:
Apperantly I have mixed fundamental analysis with stalking, but anyway, here's some more details about those Telstra trials I've found recently.
In the Feb annoucement, AVA stated that one of those trials was monitoring fibre optic networks in metropolitan Melbourne. I recently heard that the University of Melbourne has some deep research coorporation with Telstra, so I found this website.
https://eng.unimelb.edu.au/partnerships/telstra/research-projects
One of those researches was "Fibre Optic Sensing Technologies and their suitability for Telecoms Fibre Networks".
Here's the description:
Currently, Telstra is enhancing its fibre network with an intelligent fibre sensing capability. This technology detects above-ground vibrations via light pulses transmitted through underground fibre, processed by smart devices in Telstra exchange buildings. Leveraging machine learning and AI, Telstra aims to develop models for detecting vehicle movements and other relevant events. The project focuses on assessing the technology's applicability for diverse applications and refining the machine learning capability for broader implementation across Telstra's fibre network.
Based on the description, there is a very high chance that this was how Telstra had been using AVA's technologies. Therefore, I decided to dig a bit further.
From this photo on the same website, we can see that this research, conducted by Renata Borovica-Gajic (UoM) and Gilbert Oppy (Telstra) and presented in Feb 2024, was about "Connected Freight Vehicle Prioritisation at Signalized Intersections".
With this information, I was able to find this news press from 2023:
https://research.unimelb.edu.au/strengths/updates/news/smart-traffic-sensors-that-reduce-gridlock-and-unlock-the-economy
It looks like Telstra has benn doing the similar research with UoM prior to the AVA trials in Wollongong, utilizing only sensors from traffic lights and technologies developed by Telstra. The data collected was dumped into Australian Integrated Multimodal EcoSystem (AIMES), runs a couple simulations and generate insights.
Although more details about the trials with Telstra are not available, I do believe it's likely that Telstra has been using its fibre optic network and Aura-Ai seris technologies to collect and tag much more data than using just cameras and traffic light. Based on AVA's recent investor presentation, we can see that AVA has done much more than just monitoring freight vehicles. It's possible that Renata and Gilbert have been moving on to validating other capabilities from integrationg machine learning, sensor and fibre optic networks.
But still, I think the real money maker is in the subsea fibre. No hard evidence yet, it's just my gut feeling.
Lots of suspecting here, definetly not investment advice and not even a good story. Let me know what you guys think.
Bushmanpat
@fcmaster26 great work! I had thoughts about TLS being able to use AVA tech to monitor traffic throughout the city. If done well, they could supplant traditional traffic counting for development planning purposes or potentially monitor foot traffic for commercial opportunities/leasing etc. The traffic light signal prioritisation is an interesting application.
And as we know, heading into the era of AI, the money is in data.
mikebrisy
@fcmaster26 nice find. While I am no longer following $AVA closely, this seems to confirm what some speculated here (including me) that the $TLS deal is an R&D project and not yet commercialised.
The academics involved will likely be publishing on this (if their contract with $TLS allows) so it might be worth trawling the publications to see how mature the results are.
I didn’t get the impression from Mal (or the ASX $TLS deal release) that $AVA attached a lot of development risk to this. Were they being fully candid? (Again, these are genuine questions, as I don’t recall the details and no longer hold and not doing detailed work on $AVA at the mo.)