Australia: Telecommunications Disaster Resilience Innovation Program (Innovation Round)

The TDRI Program Innovation Round will focus on funding innovative telecommunications technologies that will improve the resiliency, redundancy and availability of telecommunications during and/or following a natural disaster. The Innovation Round has three focus areas:

• Deployable telecommunications solutions
• Satellite connectivity
• Enhanced situational awareness

The objective of the TDRI program is to improve the preparedness of Australia’s telecommunications networks against rising climate risks, including against an anticipated increase in the frequency and severity of natural hazards in Australia, by:

• Supporting and accelerating the development and deployment of innovative, new or emerging technologies that will improve the resiliency of telecommunications, particularly in rural, regional, remote or First Nations communities;
• Demonstrating the benefits of emerging telecommunications technologies in improving disaster resiliency outcomes; and
• Encouraging greater collaboration and partnerships between industry and government stakeholders on telecommunications disaster resilience matters

The intended outcomes of the program are:

• Expedited adoption of emerging telecommunications technologies in Australia that will improve disaster resilience outcomes for Australian communities (including through preventing outages and/or supporting the rapid restoration of services following an outage); and
• Reduced instances of telecommunications outages during natural disaster events, including reduced instances of communities being isolated and unable to contact Triple Zero services or access other critical services/supports such as disaster financial assistance.

Funding Information

• Total Amount Available (AUD): $20,000,000.00
• Estimated Grant Value (AUD): From $50,000.00 to $5,000,000.00
• Grant Activity Timeframe: You must complete your project by 30 June 2025.

Eligibility Criteria

• To be eligible, you must:
  • have an Australian Business Number (ABN)
  • be registered for the purposes of GST
• and be one of the following entity types:
  • a company incorporated in Australia
  • a company incorporated by guarantee in Australia
  • a partnership where each partner is a constitutional corporation
  • a joint (consortia) application of incorporated entities
  • a publicly funded research organisation that is a company incorporated in Australia
  • An Australian local government body, or state/territory government body, where an application involves a partnership with at least one other eligible entity
  • an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Corporation registered under the Corporations (Aboriginal and /or Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006.
• In addition, if your application is targeting Funding Stream 2: Deployment Grants, to be eligible you must also:
  • a Mobile Network Operator (MNO)
  • a Mobile Network Infrastructure Provider (MNIP) or
  • an NBN corporation as defined in Clause 1 of Schedule 1 of the National Broadband Network Companies Act 2011.
• In addition, and regardless of the funding stream targeted, if your application involves a project that intends to deliver carriage services to the public, you or your project partner(s) delivering the carriage service must either:
  • have a carrier licence as defined under the Telecommunications Act 1997 at the time you submit your application; or
  • provide a written undertaking in your application that it will apply for a carrier licence to the execution of a grant agreement, should your application be successful. Note that if the application is successful, the execution of any grant agreement will be conditional on a carrier licence first being issued by the ACMA.

For more information, visit Australian Government.