Procurement of Telecommunications Services

Monash University's Policy on Telecommunication Services requires that all telecommunications services be procured through central ITS arrangements.

This is the only way ITS can continue to successfully negotiate attractively low University-wide tariffs on your behalf.

Our current procurement contract is with Telstra and is a "whole of business" plan featuring minimum monthly expenditure obligations in all service categories. Therefore, to maintain the heavily discounted tariffs, it is of highest importance that all services be arranged through ITS, as per the above Policy.

There has been a previous instance of an attempt by a provider to direct market to staff on the ground in one Faculty on one of our campuses. While most reputable carriers know to deal through central provisioning channels, please refer any such side approaches to Gerard.Lyons@its.monash.edu

Competitive Approach

Monash University maintains an open competitive approach to acquisition of telecommunications services. Monash was an early adopter of Optus and before them AAPT services. Though its buying power and open policy, Monash has contributed to nurturing competition in the industry to broad community benefit, whilst achieving best available pricing for the University. Monash does have a strong preference for dealing directly with the real underlying service providers, rather than through 3rd party resellers (e.g. buying Optus services from Optus and Telstra services from Telstra). Monash takes neither a dogmatic anti-Telstra nor a closed-shop Telstra-only position. For Disaster Recovery purposes, we will retain some of our existing Optus lines.