J.E.Flinn

Part One:

Introduction

Telstra Corporation Limited provides telecommunication and information products and services throughout Australia. The majority of Australia’s telecommunication infrastructure relies on Telstra. Their main activities are “provision of telephone lines; national local and long distance, and international telephone calls, mobile communications, data, internet and on-line, wholesale, telephone directories and pay TV” (Yahoo Finance, 2007)
Telstra’s origins come from a department created by the Australian Commonwealth government dating back to 1901. Before 1901, some people feared that the un-federated nation was going to resort to a revolution. However, the broad liberal consensus in Australia took democracy and fairness for granted. Thus, Australia became a federation on January 1, 1901 (Cathcart, 2005, p 45). The following essay discusses the history of Telstra as it relates to the growth of Australia.

The Land Down Where?

Without modern telecommunications, Australia was nothing more than an isolated continent full of British convicts. Relying on ships to deliver messages, Australia’s communication was far behind most of the world. In the mid 19th century, Australia’s first telegraph line had been constructed, eventually connecting Australia to the rest of the world in 1872 (Naughton, 2000).
The first telephone service was installed in Melbourne in 1878. Networks began developing rapidly under the management of the colonial post offices. At an Australian Federation Conference in 1890, colonial statesman Sir Henry Parkes began his address by stating “the means of communication carried in all directions constituted one of the major reasons for the union of all colonies.” In 1901, the Commonwealth Postmaster General’s Office was given all power over postal, telegraph, and telephonic services from the Australian Constitution (Australian Heritage Commission, 2003)
The Postmaster General’s Office, or the PMG, was the Commonwealth’s largest department with nearly 10,000 permanent staff and another 6,000 contractors of various types. The use of civil aviation helped build faster postal services, however the telegraph system remained the main means of long-distant communication. Australia held one of the highest numbers of users of the public telegram system in the world. The rate of usage peaked in 1945 at 35 million telegrams. The high cost and small number of telephones restricted its usage compared to the ubiquitous telegraph service. As telephone services became cheaper, the usage was down to 18 million by 1975 Australian Heritage Commission, 2003)
A quote from Sydney’s Daily Telegraph on July 11, 1907, read:

"The successful opening of telephonic communication between Sydney and Melbourne yesterday affords another remarkable example of how the world is moving. There are many men in both cities who recollect the time when the transmission of a message from one capital to the other was a matter of days, or perhaps weeks. It is now reduced to seconds. People can converse directly with the words as they fall from their lips picked up and instantly transmitted the whole six hundred miles on the wings of harnessed lightning.”

This quote demonstrates the impact that telephone services had on a growing country. Telephone services continued to grow in Australia’s cities as their usefulness became more apparent. Similar to a spider’s web, the network began to spread across Australia, connecting several cities. Commerce and trade grew with long distance communication made available by telephone (Naughton, 2000).
The Automatic telephone exchange made telephone communication quicker and more efficient. The conversion from manual to automatic exchange took several years, even decades in some areas of Australia. Some smaller country towns were still using manual exchanges into the early 1990’s! Other innovations assisted in the growth of Australian telephone services such as thermionic repeaters, multiplexing, coaxial cable, and national trunk services (Australian Heritage Commission, 2003).
Thermionic valves and repeaters were invented to “accept weak incoming signals and automatically boost them” according to the Australian Heritage Commission. This invention allowed for the opening of the Sydney to Brisbane telephone line in 1923.
In 1925, multiplexing was introduced on the carrier system between Sydney and Melbourne. Multiplexing allowed simultaneous telephone conversations to be held on the same pair of wires. This led to the growth of telephone services and eventually overseas phone calls to be made.
Coaxial cable permitted increasing channel capacity. The first coaxial cable was laid across the Bass Straight in 1935, linking Tasmania to the mainland.
The late 1950’s were a time of revolutionary change in the Australian national trunk network. Microwaves links were installed carrying 600 channels between Melbourne and Bendigo (Refer to Appendix Map). The first broadband network was opened for all telecommunications traffic in 1962 from Sydney to Canberra to Melbourne. This expanded rapidly, followed by operator-assisted international calls to Canada, USA and Britain in 1963 (.Australian Heritage Commission, 2003).

Continue on to Part Two: http://www.cicsworld.org/blogs/jeflinn/2007/12/the_tale_of_telstrathe_impact.html