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AWA Technology Services

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AWA Technology Services

AWA Technology Services, formerly named Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd, is an Australian communications technology company. Throughout most of the twentieth century, AWA was Australia's largest and most prominent electronics organisation, undertaking development, manufacture and distribution of radio, telecommunications, television and audio equipment as well as broadcasting services.

After the sell-off of most of its assets and operating divisions, AWA is now primarily an information and communications technology (ICT) services company.

The company commenced operations in 1909 as Australasian Wireless Limited (AWL), a Telefunken wireless agent. The first chairman was Hugh Denison. Ernest Fisk, a foundation director, was general and technical manager. In 1916 he became managing director and in 1932 chairman.

The Marconi Company sued the Australian government in 1912, for infringing their patent (and AWL issued writs against firms using Marconi equipment), the government decided in future to use circuits designed by John Balsillie. Eventually the two firms settled their differences and, on 11 July 1913, formed a new company, Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd, with exclusive rights throughout Australasia to the patents, 'present and future', of both Marconi and Telefunken. Later that year the new entity established the Marconi Telefunken College of Telegraphy, (later renamed the Marconi School of Wireless.

The first radio broadcast from the United Kingdom to Australia was received in 1918 by AWA with then Prime Minister of Australia Billy Hughes, praising the troops he has just inspected on the western front. In 1930, AWA transmitted the first newsreel pictures from Sydney to London.

The Australian Government, requiring a direct radio service with the UK - in lieu of submarine cables - commissioned AWA to create a service in 1922. The government boosted the new company's capital and became its majority shareholder. In 1926, the company established two large beam wireless stations on 180 hectare sites; a receiver site in Victoria at Rockbank near Melbourne and a transmitter site at Ballan near Ballarat which eventually become known as Fiskville. A shortwave beam radiotelegraph service between Australia and Britain, undercutting the cable companies, was inaugurated on 8 April 1927 and terminated on 31 May 1969. In 1928, it established a similar service between Australia and Canada. In April 1930 the Empire radiotelephone service commenced.

The Australian Government in 1922 granted AWA exclusive rights to operate the Coastal Radio Service (CRS), a network of maritime radio stations that eventually included stations in New Guinea which had been hurriedly installed when Japan entered World War II. The Overseas Telecommunications Act 1946 resulted in the creation of the Overseas Telecommunications Commission and ownership of the CRS was transferred to this new organisation on 1 October 1946. In effect, all overseas telecommunications was nationalised. Australia was adopting a Commonwealth-wide policy that had been adopted the Commonwealth conference in 1945. The main goal was to end the artificial routing of traffic to cable or wireless depending on private financial profits.

With its commencement in the 1930s, AWA Aviation Department (later Aviation Division) operated the major avionics servicing organisation in Australia and Papua New Guinea through a number of service depots located at major and secondary airports, with a large workshop located in Airport West, Victoria.

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