Jabarkan Statistik kemilikan: dari Telekomunikasi di Australia dalam bahasa melayu

Telefon - talian utama digunakan: 9.76 juta (2007)

Telefon - telefon bimbit selular: 21.26 juta (2007)

Australia's first telephone service (connecting the Melbourne and South Melbourne offices of Robinson Brothers) was launched in 1879, with the first telephone exchange opened in Melbourne in 1880. Around 7,757 calls were handled in 1884.

The Australian networks were government assets operating under colonial legislation modelled on that of Britain. The UK Telegraph Act 1868 for example empowered the Postmaster General to "acquire, maintain and work electric telegraphs" and foreshadowed the 1870 nationalisation of competing British telegraph companies.

The nature of the networks meant that regulation in Australia was undemanding: network personnel were government employees or agents, legislation was enhanced on an incremental basis and restrictions could be achieved through infrastructure. All the colonies ran their telegraph networks at a deficit through investment in infrastructure and subsidisation of regional access, generally with bipartisan support.

Government-operated post office and telegraph networks - the largest parts of the bureaucracy - were combined into a single department in each colony on the model of the UK Post Office: South Australia in 1869, Victoria in 1870, Queensland in 1880 and New South Wales in 1893.

Seksyen 51(v) Perlembagaan Australia gave the new national government power over all postal, telegraphic, telephonic and 'other like services'. The latter encompassed future developments such as radio, television and the internet.

The colonial networks (staff, switches, wires, handsets, buildings etc) were transferred to the Commonwealth and became the responsibility of the first Postmaster-General (PMG), a federal Minister overseeing the Postmaster-General's Department that managed all domestic telephone, telegraph and postal services. With 16,000 staff (and assets of over £6 million) it accounted for 90% of the new federal bureaucracy. That figure climbed to over 120,000 staff (around 50% of the federal bureaucracy) by the late sixties.

Public phones were available in a handful of post offices and otherwise restricted to major businesses, government agencies, institutions and wealthier residences. Eight million telegrams were sent that year (?) over 43,000 miles of line.

There were around 33,000 phones across Australia, with 7,502 telephone subscribers in inner Sydney and 4,800 in the Melbourne central business district. A trunk line between Melbourne (headquarters of the PMG Department) and Sydney was established in 1907, with extension to Adelaide in 1914, Brisbane in 1923, Perth in 1930 and Hobart in 1935.

Overseas cable links to Australia remained in private hands, reflecting the realities of imperial politics, demands on the new government's resources and perceptions of its responsibilities. The PMG department became responsible for some international shortwave services - particularly from the 1920s - and for a new Coastal Radio Service in 1911, with the first of a network of stations operational in February 1912. Australia and New Zealand had ratified the 1906 Berlin Radio-telegraph Convention in 1907.

During the 1930s the PMG became responsible for the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). Its management of the telecommunications network echoed the values enshrined by the ABC and the BBC.

In the era of privatization is has been fashionable to backtrack to a time when the PMG was supposedly operated by enlightened technocrats in the national interest and without concerns of profit. That vision is problematical, as it is clear that decisions about the location and management of facilities (switches and service centers) reflected local political demands and the 'Australian Settlement' first articulated by Alfred Deakin.

The PMG was, after all, a major employer in rural areas, the Minister generally came from the Country Party and there was an emphasis on in-house development and local manufacturing. Governments of whatever persuasion used the organisation as a cash cow; it was not a discrete statutory body or company and faced problems in preventing profits from being absorbed by the national consolidated revenue account.