Data located in Australia but owned or operated by a US company could be accessed under a Patriot Act request, even if this violates National Privacy Principles, a legal expert has warned.

Communications services company, BT, has appointed former Macquarie Telecom customer service and operations group executive, Simon Gatward, as its new chief operating officer.

The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) has added a number of Greenfield facilities to its data centre facilities panel, including Fujitsu and Macquarie Telecom.

Macquarie Telecom and Verizon Australia are the latest in a slew of telcos to be appointed to the Australian Government Information Management Office’s (AGIMO), telco service panel, with just “one or two” more to be announced.

Macquarie Telecom has upgraded a significant portion of its legacy IT, including its storage infrastructure and IT operations management systems, amid significant growth in demand for its hosting and Cloud services.

Macquarie Telecom has admitted a failure of the air conditioning systems at its Sydney-based Intellicentre data centre facility caused a number of customer’s servers to shut down and reset early Saturday morning.