States and start-ups: Public competitors in Australian communications

Abstract

This article explores three state-owned or supported communications enterprises: the Pacific Cable, opened in 1902; Amalgamated Wireless Australasia (AWA), which launched international wireless telegraphy services in 1927; and AUSSAT, a domestic satellite system established in 1985. All were partnerships formed to build and operate new communications infrastructure in competition with an incumbent. Of each, the article asks: what problem needed to be solved? What institutional solution and technologies were chosen and why? How did incumbents respond? How did the enterprise perform and why did it end? It finds very mixed performance, both as investments of public money and as solutions to the problems they were set up to solve.

Keywords:

• public enterprise
• telecommunications
• wireless
• broadband
• submarine cable

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was supported by the Australian Research Council, 2010–12 Discovery Project 1095061, ‘Imperial Designs: Remaking the Institutions of Global Communications’.