New Technology and the Universal Service Obligation in Australia: Drifting Towards Exclusion‪?‬

The ability for citizens to communicate with each other and the state is an enduring foundation of democracy. In a country such as Australia, with its relatively sparse and widely dispersed population, the ability to link the citizenship remotely through technology facilitated the development of nationalist ideologies when the separated colonies united at the time of Federation in 1901. The Universal Service Obligation is the mechanism that ensures that every Australian is linked through the telephone network, and potentially through the Internet. However the system is not without its flaws. There are serious implications for those who fall outside this 'universal' ability to communicate. This article tracks the development of the Universal Service Obligation: the mechanism through which the Australian Government requires telecommunications companies--primarily Telstra--to provide a minimum level of telephone service to all Australians. Exactly what constitutes that basic service, how, and at what level it is provided is a subject of debate that centres on how the words universal, service and obligation are interpreted and defined. The colonial past provides the framework for the current debates about the rollout of new telecommunications infrastructure. The development of telecommunications in Australia and the role of government in that development has changed significantly over time, from the Postmaster-General's Department as a government department through the deregulation of the telecommunications sector and the privatisation of Telstra. The history of language and ideology of access to the telecommunication network informs its present positioning.