From the Archives, 1993: Mobile phone network launches despite security objections

It enabled Telecom to launch the country’s first digital mobile phone network yesterday.

The Federal Government was reticent about the decision to let the new network go ahead.

A spokesman would say only that the Attorney-General was “satisfied” with the operational aspects of the new system.

The general manager of Telecom MobileNet, Mr John Dearn, refused to confirm or deny that calls made from the new GSM (General System Mobile) phones to other GSM phones could not be intercepted, or that an exemption had been sought from the Government to allow the new GSM service to begin.

“We have an agreement with the Department of Communications that we will not discuss the licence conditions,” he said.

Referring to the fact that most mobile phone calls are to fixed phones attached to the ordinary telephone network, Optus’s chief operating officer, Mr Ian Boatman, said that most calls carried on Optus’s GSM network would be interceptable by the security agencies.

A third licensed operator, Vodaphone, is not likely to begin its service until late this year.

The three mobile licensees are required by their licences to introduce the new digital mobile system, or GSM, as soon as the standard is available.

However, it became clear that the formula used to encode the new service, known as the A5 algorithm, was so secure that not even the police or security agencies could listen in.

The dilemma for the Government was that having insisted on the early introduction of GSM, it faced the prospect of substantial delays if it did not waive the licence condition. Because the standard was so secure, nobody anticipated the difficulty of re- coding and re-encrypting the algorithm to give access to law enforcement agencies.

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The Telecom system, costing in excess of $100 million to establish, covers more than 55 per cent of Australian consumers in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, the Gold Coast, Newcastle, Geelong and on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria.