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Communications in Australia is dominated by the telecommunications provider, Telstra (short for Telecom Australia) which is 51% government-owned and 49% market controlled. Other telephone carriers include Optus (owned by SingTel), AAPT (owned by Telecom New Zealand) and Vodafone.1 Telephony
Australia relies mainly on a dominant GSM network, augmented by CDMA in regional areas. 3G cellular phone services were introduced into major centers in 2003.
The telephone system generally provides good domestic and international service.
- domestic: domestic satellite system
- international: submarine cables to New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia; satellite earth stations - 10 Intelsat (4 Indian Ocean and 6 Pacific OceanFor other meanings of pacific see pacific (disambiguation). The Pacific Ocean (from the Spanish Pacifico meaning peaceful is the world's largest body of water. It encompasses a third of the Earth's surface, having an area of 179. 7 million kmē (69. 4 mill), 2 InmarsatINMARSAT is an international telecommunications company founded in 1979. It operates a fleet of nine ( as of 2003) geosynchronous telecommunications satellites. The organization is mostly owned by national telephone companies. INMARSAT provides telephony (Indian and Pacific Ocean regions)
Ownership statistics:
- Telephones - main lines in use: 10.05 million (2000)
- Telephones - mobile cellular: 8.6 million (2000)
2 Radio, television, cable and Internet
Australia is transitioning to digital free-to-air broadcasting and will phase out analogue broadcasts from 2008. Australian digital TV regulations call for SD broadcasts in 576i and a required amount of HD content in at least 576p format. HD quota is currently set at 1040 hours annually. State media ( ABCThe ABC or Australian Broadcasting Corporation is the national, public broadcaster in Australia. It is government-funded and provides radio, television and online services throughout metropolitan and regional Australia and overseas via Radio Australia. and SBSThe Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) is one of two government funded Australian public broadcasting radio and television networks, the other being the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The purpose of the SBS is to broadcast programming of inter) are able to offer multi-channel services, however commercial networks are restricted in this area until 2008 in deference to the Pay-TV satellite and cable networks. Datacasting is also restricted.
- Radio broadcast stations: AM 262, FM 345, shortwave 1 (1998)
- Radios: 25.5 million (1997)
- Television broadcast stations: 104 (1997)
- Television broadcast networks (metropolitan): 5 (ABC, 7, 9, 10 & SBS)
As of June 2004, there were 409,000 installed digital set-top boxThe term set-top box describes a device that connects to a television and some external source of signal, and turns the signal into content then displayed on the screen. The signal source might be a satellite dish, a cable (see cable television), a telephes in Australia (roughly 4% of televisions).
- Cable & Satellite Television Companies 4 (Foxtel, Optus, Austar and TransACT)
- Televisions: 10.15 million (1997)
- Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 571 (2002)
Country code: AU
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