Telstra sold a minority stake in the cell towers but under Brady the company made the pretty radical decision to hold on to massive infrastructure business. In doing so, she and Michael Ackland, who rides shotgun as chief financial officer, resisted a $15 billion financial sugar hit.

At the time the decision seemed “crazy brave”.

This was a particularly gutsy call one year into the role because many Telstra shareholders had been salivating over the return of capital they were set to receive when this cash hit the company’s coffers.

A year down the track, it has become abundantly clear to everyone that Telstra’s real advantage is its network – which is the business of connecting. Specialist companies that can provide services that use the network abound – and they are either better than Telstra at providing these bells and whistles or can at least compete away Telstra’s profit in this area.

This explains why a few months back, Brady drew a line in the sand on the Enterprise business or, more particularly, the part of this division that sold these value-added services – the Network Application Services.

Loading

It simply couldn’t compete with the specialist services from the world’s big tech companies that dominate the landscape and devote billions of technology dollars to cutting-edge products and services.

Two-thirds of Network Applications services and products have been removed from the shelf.

The capital expenditure is now focused on improving the mobile network and building inter-capital city fibre. Telstra has a natural advantage in this space and the growth of artificial intelligence only enhances the need for these networks.

Already, Telstra has signed up Microsoft to be its first client.

In playing to Telstra’s strengths Brady has also been spending capital on its mobile network, where it is the dominant player.

In the 2024 result, Telstra managed to post a healthy increase in subscriber numbers and some improvement in revenue per subscriber.

The raft of increases to prices for mobile plans that have been announced, have been carefully calibrated to cater to differing levels of the cost of living pain that Australians are experiencing.

The cohort that can best absorb higher mobile prices will experience higher bills. For those struggling, some plans won’t become more expensive and others won’t rise above the rate of inflation. It will be more nuanced than Telstra’s previous pricing strategy of all plans moving in tandem with the consumer price index.

The share price reacted positively to the profit, in part because dividends rose 6 per cent and Telstra reaffirmed its guidance for the 2025 financial year profit.

After only two years in the job, Brady has managed to reset Telstra’s foundations, play to its strengths and more importantly recognise its limitations.

Read more: