Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/51409

Title

Fast forward back to the future

Author(s)

Given, Jock

Abstract

Kevin Rudd might not like the comparison. Nearly 90 years ago, prime minister Billy Hughes returned triumphant from an overseas trip and announced a public private partnership to construct a nation-building communications network. His plan was for the Commonwealth to take a bare majority stake in a company establishing a direct wireless telegraph service between Australia and Britain. This service would compete with the undersea cables that had carried electronic communication between Australia and the rest of the world since the Overland Telegraph Line opened in 1872. It was a huge risk. But the potential benefits seemed immense. Wireless promised lower prices for telegrams because of its lower costs. A direct link with London that could not be severed by hostile powers resonated strongly in a dominion distant from the heart of the British Empire. While this history does not offer neat lessons for Kevin Rudd's proposed public private communications partnership, it does provide clues about how such an arrangement might succeed, stretch and strain. Those clues lie in the technology, the market power of the institution created and its financial performance, the duration of the arrangement and the level of political support for it.

Publication type

Newspaper article

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology. Faculty of Life and Social Sciences. Institute for Social Research

Source

Canberra Times, 09 April 2009

Publication year

2009

Keyword(s)

Australia;  Broadband;  Communications networks;  Government;  History;  Internet;  Public private communications partnership;  Telecommunications;  Wireless service

Publisher

Fairfax

Publisher URL

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/fast-forward-back-to-the-future/1482840.aspx