Mr Campbell asked the Minister representing the Minister for Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts, upon notice, on 8 April 1998:

(1) Is there a telephone which can receive (a) both the GSM digital signal and an analogue system signal and (b) both the CDMA signal and an analogue system signal.

(2) Can the GSM signal interface directly with satellites.

(3) Will a system be produced which allows direct interface between the GSM signal and satellites; if so (a) which satellites and (b) will the satellites use GSM or CDMA technology.

(4) Is it a fact that there is no difference between GSM and analogue signals; if so, why is the analogue system being discarded.

(5) Does the GSM system have technological advantages over analogue systems; if so, what are they; if not, why is the former being preferred to the latter.

Mr Warwick Smith (Minister for Family Services) —The Minister for Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question:

(1) There are a number of different interfaces that are used for mobile telephony resulting in different standards being used around the world. Equipment manufacturers have started to produce mobile handsets that are compatible with more than one standard, much like some modern television receivers that can receive either the European PAL signal or the American NTSC signal.

It is entirely up to the commercial judgement of the equipment manufacturers to determine what combinations of standards are built into the handsets they design and sell. While any combination of standards may be theoretically possible, there are some combinations that are likely to become available and other that are not, depending on how the various technical standards are taken up in various regions of the world. In response to the specific questions:

. the GSM/analogue AMPS combination in the 800/900 MHz band is not currently available, and is unlikely to be developed;

. there are phones available that have analogue AMPS and CDMA in the 800 MHz band. The 800 MHz spectrum being offered in the current auction process could be used for CDMA.

(2) and (3) There are a number of new global satellite systems being developed and coming into service in the next few years. They are intended to operate in a complementary way with digital terrestrial mobile services. The subscriber will use the terrestrial cellular service where it is available and will use the satellite where terrestrial is not available. The subscriber will need a new handset (GSM + satellite) or (CDMA + satellite) to access satellite services which have their own frequency bands and interface standards. Manufacturers are producing a variety of handsets with various interface combinations to suit the different regional markets.

(4) There are fundamental differences between the GSM and analogue signals in the same way as there are fundamental differences between vinyl records and CD discs.

All analogue phones transmit speech as identifiable and decipherable waves on particular radio frequencies.

All digital technologies, by contrast, encode speech and transmit this code which is subsequently decoded when it is received.

(5) In the 1990 Government policy statement, the decision was announced to license three public mobile carriers and to accept prima facie AUSTEL's recommendation that GSM digital technology should be adopted as Australia's first digital standard. At the time of the decision, the AMPS analogue technology was capable of supporting only two operators, whereas digital technologies such as GSM could support more than two operators. GSM was adopted as the first digital standard, but this does not restrict the introduction of further digital standards.

The technical advantages of changing from analogue to digital technology include:

. digital technology allows the telephone network to carry more conversations at one time and this helps to minimise network congestion;

. digital transmissions are far less easily intercepted than the unencoded analogue transmissions; and

. by virtue of the signal processing that is a necessary part of a digital system, digital services also potentially offer more enhanced services to the user. For example:

- data and fax originating and terminating

- fax mail store and forward

- sending and receiving short messages—Mail

- personal answering service—Memo

- integrated voicemail services

- advice of message by voice call, SMS or pager

- remote mail, LAN and Internet access, fax back

- full control of diversion, on voice, data, fax, SMS

- virtual private network—dial plan

- auto national and international roaming 48 countries.