ABSTRACT
The election of the Rudd Labor Government in Australia in 2007 brought a change in communications policy. The new government sought to increase the speed of Australia’s broadband connections and subsequently drive the development and adoption of services that underpin the digital economy. The aim of the policy was to address some of existing bottlenecks in the Australian telecommunications landscape that were a direct result of previous policy decisions. This chapter develops a genealogy of Australian telecommunications policy to provide an understanding of the underlying forces that drove the government’s decision to invest in broadband infrastructure.
