ABSTRACT
The capacity of satellites to broadcast television and radio signals was closely monitored by engineers of the Australian Postmasters General Department through technical studies that began in 1961. It took two more decades for Australia to put a communications satellite service into operation. Yet Australia possessed a geography and demography that appeared ready-made for satellite services. It is a continent roughly the size of North America, with major population centres separated from each other by large tracts of sparsely-populated land. The territory that must be traversed to pass from one large city to another varies from alpine to desert. Most of those large cities are strung along the eastern and southern coasts of the continent where the biggest are conurbations of more than four million people and the smallest a million.
