🚀 go-pugleaf

I can offer a brief overview of the situation.

Australia has repeatedly refused to allow pay TV up until about 
1990/91 when the Government allowed it.

There are now three pay TV operators:

* Galaxy, owned by (I think) Australis Media and Continental 
Cablevision. It uses MDS microwave transmission for pay TV.

* Optus Vision, a joint venture between Optus (Australia's second 
telephony carrier, owned by Cable & Wireless, Bell South and 
Australian institutional investors) and between Channel Nine and 
Channel Seven, two national free-to-air television networks. Nine 
is part of Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd (owned by Kerry 
Packer) and Seven is controlled by Telstra (the govt-owned 
telephony carrier) and News Corporation (owned by Rupert 
Murdoch). Optus Vision is establishing a hybrid fibre/coax 
network for pay TV and as of next year it will offer full 
telephony services and broadband services later.

* Foxtel, a joint venture between Telstra and News Corp. Foxtel 
is using a hybrid fibre/coax network to deliver pay TV and 
broadband services. Telstra already provides telephony through 
fibre/coax/copper and it has a monopoly on local calls.

The three companies have relationships with US cable and 
entertainment corps, including TCI and others. Alliances are 
fairly fluid still.

Aus has a fairly large fibre infrastructure and coax is being 
rolled out primarily for pay TV, but eventually I think telephony 
and broadband services will be a bigger market.

Telstra dominates the wire ownership, although it is govt owned 
(for now). Competing infrastructures are being built, but it is 
the nature of the media and communications beast that there are 
only two or three players. AT&T are proposing their own backbone 
to Hong Kong to link to HK<->US cables, but this is prolly only 
for Internet/broadband services.

Hope this helps and if you have specific questions, pls write.

Rgds,

-- 
Dan Tebbutt, Information Technology Journalist
dtebbutt@acp.com.au  Ph:+61 2 288-9186  Fax:+61 2 267-4909
DanWeb: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~dtebbutt
"The revolution will be televised ... on cable!"