Australian telephone networks

The global telephone network is the world’s largest and most complex machine.

Just think about it: every telephone in the world must connect and work with every other telephone – an old phone box in rural Africa must allow people to make phone calls to a modern mobile phone in Melbourne.

And the more phones there are, the more valuable the network becomes.

Australia’s telephone network has unique challenges. Our country is very large but has a very small population, making it difficult to provide basic telephony services to everyone. A lot of time and money has been spent to provide the telecommunications infrastructure, the wires, exchanges, satellites and mobile phone towers, to connect all parts of Australia, even where towns, such as Collector, only have a population of 100 people or less.

On the other hand, Australia is relatively flat with a large desert in the middle. We don’t have to deal with lots of snow and ice, or carve through thick jungles. We don’t have long ranges of mountains to overcome. And most of our population lives in a few centres around the coast.

Because Australia has such a long history in telecommunications, we have a blend of old and new technology. Since the first Australian telephone exchange was opened in Melbourne in 1880, Australia has opened over 5,000 telephone exchanges, providing more than 11 million related services.

Telstra owns and operates all fixed-line PSTN services that are based on copper lines. This network is also commonly referred to as POTS, Plain Old Telephone System, which refers to any network designed mostly for voice traffic.

Parts of this network are old, expensive to maintain and don’t allow the provision of some advanced services such as video-on-demand.

Australia is now moving towards an integrated digital network where one network can handle everything from broadband access, to telephony and television.

In one of the first networks of its kind, TransACT’s integrated digital network delivers telephony, broadband and subscription television services to parts of Canberra.