overview

This profile covers the shape, history and regulation of telecommunications in Australia and New Zealand, along with a discussion of infrastructure and markets.

The profile comprises -

• beginnings - a broad history of telecommunications in Australia and New Zealand to 1987, for the moment concentrating on institutions rather than their impact
• competition - an account of developments since 1987, characterised by privatisation of the government-owned operators and competition among connectivity providers
• ISPs - an outline of the growth of the Australian and New Zealand Service Provider (ISP) sector
• Hosting - and the Internet Content (ICH) sector in Australasia
• Agencies - a map of the key government agencies and industry bodies
• Regulation - comments on regulatory mechanisms, key legislation and the shape of regulatory debate
• Backbone - an outline of the network infrastructures
• Periphery - an outline of the 'last mile', mobiles and devices on the periphery of the networks
• Numbering and naming considers phone number allocation, domain naming and administration, and directory services
• Demand considers the shape of demand (domestic and institutional) in both countries
• Supply considers the supply end of the market, with major carriers and service providers being discussed in a complementary profile
• Futures considers the shape of connectivity demand, infrastructure and regulation over the next fifteen years
• CIIP - critical information infrastructure protection
• Crimes - what is illegal on the networks
• Policing - law enforcement aspects, in particular interception and ISP involvement
• Statistics - key recent data on Australian and New Zealand connectivity
• landmarks 1 - key events in the history of telecommunications in Australia and New Zealand to 1992
• landmarks 2 - key events from 1993 onwards

It supplements discussion in the Network & GII guide, the profile on Communications Revolutions and our snapshot of the internet in Australia.

Information about individual connectivity providers such as Telstra, Optus, Telecom New Zealand and OneTel is being progressively added to a set of notes here.

     Australian and New Zealand studies

Unlike the extensive literature on privatisation and deregulation there are surprisingly few studies of the impact of telecommunications on Australian society, the role of the telephone/telegraph in Australian and New Zealand history and the operation of communication agencies. That contrasts with Canada, US and UK.

The outstanding history of Australian telecommunications remains Clear Across Australia: A History of Telecommunications (Melbourne: Nelson 1984) by Ann Moyal. Taming The Tyrant: The First 100 Years of Australia's International Telecommunications Service (Sydney: Allen & Unwin 1987) by Edgar Harcourt and The Wired Nation Continent: The Communication Revolution & Federating Australia (Melbourne: Oxford Uni Press 1996) by Kevin Livingstone are drier and have a narrower focus.

The forthcoming Copper & Gold: Colonial Telecommunication Economics before 1901 (Canberra: Antiope Press 2007) by Bruce Arnold explores the growth of traffic, infrastructure, revenues, costs and overseas benchmarks.

For New Zealand Alex Wilson's Wire & Wireless: A History of Telecommunications in New Zealand 1860-1987 (Palmerston: Dunmore Press 1994) is serviceable.

There have been a number of journalistic treatments of individual developments, for example Alice Thomson's popular but resolutely undocumented The Singing Line: Tracking the Australian Adventures of My Intrepid Victorian Ancestors (New York: Vintage 2000) on construction of the OTL and Mark Westfield's more analytical The Gatekeepers: The Global Media Battle to control Australia's Pay TV (Annandale: Pluto Press 2000).

Particular issues are explored in Cento Veljanovski's IPA paper (PDF) on Pay TV in Australia: Markets & Mergers, Paul Barry's Rich Kids: How The Murdochs and Packers Lost $950 million in One.Tel (Sydney: Bantam 2002) and 'IT Failure and the Collapse of One.Tel' by David Avison & David Wilson in Information Systems: The e-Business Challenge (London: Kluwer 2002) edited by Roland Traunmuller.

As yet there has been no monographic treatment of the Australian telecommunications and dotcom bubble.

Much of the significant academic and advocacy literature regarding competition, pricing and services is found in journals rather than in monographs. Points of entry include Australian Telecommunications Regulation (Sydney: UNSW Press 2004) edited by Alasdair Grant, Fred Brenchley's sympathetic Allan Fels: A Portrait of Power (Milton: Wiley 2003), SG Corones' Competition Law in Australia (Sydney: LBC 1999), Holly Raiche's short 1997 paper A History of Australian Telecommunications Policy and Of Manners Gentle: Enforcement Strategies of Australian Business Regulatory Agencies (Melbourne: Oxford Uni Press 1986) by Peter Grabowsky & John Braithwaite, and Gary Maddern & Grant Coble-Neal's 2002 'Internet Economics & Policy: An Australian Perspective' in 78 The Economic Record 242. A perspective is provided in Continentalizing Canadian Telecommunications: The Politics of Regulatory Reform (Montréal: McGill-Queen's Uni Press 2003) by Vanda Rideout.

Official and industry sources range in value. Those of particular importance are the reports of the Australian Competition & Consumer Competition, reports by and submissions to federal parliamentary inquiries, publications by the Australian Communications Authority (now ACMA) and the Productivity Commission - highlighted later in this profile.

     offshore perspectives

Perspectives are provided by works highlighted in the Communications & Media Revolutions profile on this site, which highlights sectoral studies and research on specific telecommunication providers.

These include Global Communications Since 1844: Geopolitics & Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni Press 1999) by Peter Hughill, The Struggle for Control of Global Communication: The Formative Century (Urbana: Uni of Illinois Press 2002) by Jill Hills, The Carrier Wave: New Information Technology & the Geography of Innovation, 1846-2003 (London: Unwin Hyman 1988) by Peter Hall & Paschal Preston, Media Technology & Society: A History from the Telegraph to the Internet (London: Routledge 1999) by Brian Winston, Under the Wire: How The Telegraph Changed Diplomacy (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 2003) by David Nickles and The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications & International Politics 1851-1945 (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1991) by Daniel Headrick.

The Ketupa.net site features detailed profiles on the ABC, Reuters and major broadcasting/publishing groups such as Murdoch's News and Packer's CPH/PBL.

Other questions about connectivity are discussed here.





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