Right place, right time

WHEN Michael Malone founded internet service provider iiNet, most people would have been unaware of the technological phenomenon that has reshaped the world in many ways.

Mr Malone admits it was simply timing that got him into the business. He had studied as a teacher but became familiar with the earliest public iterations of the world wide web through university, given academic institutions were early adopters of the internet.

But when he finished studying, Mr Malone was cut off from the fledgling communication service. “There was no access so I asked other students if they would use it if I set it up,” Mr Malone told Business News.

After an overwhelmingly positive response, he decided to establish the necessary infrastructure in the garage of his family home, a site from which iiNet operated for several years and which probably ended up being the most connected house in Australia (350 telephone lines were installed at the Padbury residence).

Mr Malone said another company, DIALix, was already in operation in Western Australia, but it was more focused on email and, as such, he believes his company was the first ISP established in the state.

From that start, iiNet grew to become one of the nation’s biggest internet players before it was finally taken over in 2015.

Along the way, Mr Malone experienced firsthand the key trends in technology and the evolving business environment that came with opportunities and challenges.

For instance, the mid-to-late 1990s was a period of substantial growth as consumers signed up for the internet for the first time and various product and service providers sought to capture this opportunity, creating a spectacular bubble called the dot.com boom.

At the same time, the heavily regulated sector was reliant on the infrastructure of Telstra, the privatised telecommunications monopoly that was also a retail competitor in the ISP space.

Mr Malone summarises this period as being the end of the 20-year invention phase and the beginning of the next two-decade phase of building.

We are now in the application phase, he says.

Throughout the entire period there has been an overarching theme, driven by consumer demand and technological innovation services that have become faster, easier and more abundant.

“Data use goes up two per cent a month has [during] all that time,” Mr Malone said.

He said the arrival of Netflix was one moment that led to an aberrantly big one-off rise in data usage but, in general, it was a steady and inexorable increase.

In the past 30 years, mobile telephony emerged and, with the arrival of the iPhone, became a dominant technology as the portable telephone grew from handling calls to receiving emails and providing internet access.

Mr Malone’s post-iiNet interests have reflected key trends in communications technology during the past decade.

He was a founder of Diamond Cyber Security, a consulting firm that became part of CyberCX, protecting data and privacy, which has become a major market due to the major commercial and defence threats posed by hacking, malware and ransom attacks.

As a director of WiseTech Global, Mr Malone has also been part of the software-as-a-service sector during the past decade, a market response to the emergence of cloud technology, whereby computing power moved away from the home or office to what could be accessed through an increasingly fast internet.

Mr Malone also sits on the board of NBN Co, which operates the national broadband cable and satellite network.

As a student of linguistics when he was younger, Mr Malone said he was fascinated by artificial intelligence and its growing ability to problem solve.

He sees automation growing but believes average Australian internet speeds must rise for the country to take full advantage of new technology.

Mr Malone said while WA was a place of opportunity, technology entrepreneurs still tended to leave the state to progress their business, which affected economic diversity.

“With less than three per cent unemployment, it is not a problem,” he said. “But we need to invest in the future.”