For well over a century from the Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1905 through to AM broadcasting, to the aborted introduction of FM broadcasting in the 1940s through to installing television in the international FM band as well as in an international satellite band and also on frequencies prone to sporadic E-layer propagation Australia has screwed up radiocommunications big-time.

Also, there's its inept handling of spectrum management—the inappropriate deregulation of spectrum management including the outsourcing of EMR/RF interference standards/enforcement to commercial interests which has resulted in a higher RF noise spectrum background.

If that were not enough there's the inept handling of the way the country deregulated the phone/telecommunications services where inept governments of both right and left persuasions sold off the government telecommunications business (Telecom Australia [previously PMG's Dept.]) to become a public corporation, aka Telstra.

In the process and to maximize profits they also sold off the cableways/rights of way that effectively nuked any decent competition (Australia being such a large country that duplicating infrastructure that was put in place over the previous 130 years or so would be an enormous undertaking and cost many billions). With Telstra now controlling and monopolizing this wealth of network infrastructure contributed by many generations of Australians the competition, Vodafone and Optus, would have to duplicate the network and that cost untold billions.

Governments reaped short-term monies but the poor hapless consumers paid for it many times over and are still doing so.

Right, a cableways authority to share the common resource would have made much more sense. As Australian telecommunications infrastructure has a flag-fall attached, competition is in name only. And the Government is likely to repeat the fuckup as it will sell off the NBN.

The NBN/National Broadband Network/fibre was (and still is) the next almighty fuckup which books could be written about. The saga is far too long and involved to detail here but resolves around whether copper or fibre should be installed in homes. Needless to say the shortsighted short-term copper approach was adopted.

Again, selling off the NBN will once again repeat the cableways problem.

Greedy market forces, weak-minded and gullible politicians and a lack of technical people with commonsense and nous means Australia is set to repeat these problems over and over.

Now we have this latest 3G/4G fiasco. Only two days ago I found that my standby 4G phone that I use as a backup now does not work even though the Telstra account is valid and paid up well into December this year!

Over the last 30 or so years Australian citizens have paid dearly for these fuckups—duplicated cableways infrastructure and such. Heavens knows how many unnecessary billions have gone into the pockets of those who've managed to twist politicians around their little fingers.

For well over a century Australia has mismanaged its radio and telecommunications services to the extent that it ought to be held up to the world as an exemplar of what NOT to do. The country's ineptitude is, frankly, beyond belief.

China, if you're reading this why don't you just walk straight in and take over? The country's in too much of a shambles and disorganized to resist, and on recent evidence you're much, much better at installing nationwide infrastructure than we could ever dream of.