Leading global ICT companies in Australia based or headquartered in Sydney include IBM, SAP, Microsoft, Nokia, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems.

More than 120,000 people in NSW work in the ICT industry, about 39% of the national total.

NSW accounts for 43% of Australian specialist ICT businesses and 37% of telecommunications services businesses.

The State represents 43% of ICT wages and salaries in Australia, with sales of goods and services by the NSW ICT industry worth A$52 billion in 2006-07. Information, media and telecommunications companies contributed $16 billion, while computer services companies contributed A$11 billion in sales and services revenue. The State accounted for 46% of national ICT manufacturing sales of goods and services in 2006-07.

NSW is the base for Australia's ICT services exports and accounts for 52% of Australia's computer and information services exports. In 2007-08, NSW exports of ICT services exceeded $800 million.

ICT infrastructure
Leading ICT infrastructure and service providers based in Sydney include PacNet, AAPT, CSC, EDS, Fujitsu, Global Switch, SingTel-Optus, Sprint International and Telstra.

Wireless
Australia has a mobile phone subscription rate of over 100%, and this network is completely digital. Digital mobile phone networks cover more than 95 per cent of the population. Major mobile service providers SingTel- Optus, Vodafone and Hutchison are headquartered in Sydney.

International connectivity
NSW telecommunications infrastructure includes four high capacity international fibre optic cable networks linking Australia to the US, Europe and Asia. Sydney is a major internet-exchange point and telecommunications hub serviced by deep-sea fibre optic cables that link high-speed metro and intra-city fibre cable networks.

International call costs are among the lowest in the region.

Internet data centres
Sydney is home to many internet data centres and telecommunications companies offering a range of services, including co-location, shared and dedicated hosting, data warehousing, disaster recovery and managed services.

World class research and development
In 2008, Australia ranked fourth in the world, ahead of Singapore (6th) and Japan (18th), for e-readiness, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. E-readiness is a measure of the quality of a country’s ICT infrastructure and the ability of its consumers, businesses and governments to use ICT to their benefit.

NSW is a leader in ICT research and, in 2006-07, accounted for 40% of the A$787 million businesses spent on information, media and telecommunications services R&D in Australia. It also contributed 43% of the A$619 million allocated nationally by businesses to telecommunications services R&D.

International companies with significant R&D centres in Sydney include Avaya, Canon Information Systems Research Australia (CISRA), Citrix Systems, Honeywell, Alcatel-Lucent and IBM.

ICT-related research centres which receive funding from the NSW Department of State and Regional Development (DSRD) include the:

• ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computing
• ARC Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems
• Institute for Transdisciplinary eResearch Services and Technology (INTERSECT)
• CRC for Capital Markets
• CRC for Smart Services
• NICTA

Also headquartered in NSW are the Australian Centre for Advanced Computing and Communications (ac3) and the CSIRO ICT Centre at Marsfield.

National Information and Communications Technology Australia
National ICT Australia (NICTA) plays a major role in the Australian Government's policy to promote science and innovation. Its aim is to capitalise on Australia's extensive ICT talent through world-class research, commercialisation, education, and industry collaboration.

Based in Sydney, NICTA's research efforts focus on the technology challenges facing industry, community, and the national interest.