The Overseas Telecommunications Commission (Australia)

The OTC (Australia) Moree Earth Station at Carnarvon c. 1968. Cover of an OTC promotional booklet scanned by Colin Mackellar.

The Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC), was created by an Act of the Australian Parliament in August 1946.

OTC would be responsible for all international telecommunications in and out of Australia.

Intially, that role involved High Frequency radio and cable communications.

During the 1960s, the OTC was designated the responsible entity for satellite communications (rather than the PMG or Department of Supply, who were also interested in taking on that role).

In 1992 the OTC merged with the Australian Telecommunications Corporation Limited to create the Australian and Overseas Telecommunications Corporation Limited (AOTC) – now trading as Telstra. (The Australian Telecommunications Corporation itself had been the telecoms arm of the Post Masters General Department, PMG, until 1975.)

OTC installations played key roles in Australia’s contribution to the U.S. space program – and Apollo in particular –

The Carnarvon OTC Satellite Earth Station was built to provide reliable communications between NASA’s Carnarvon Tracking Station and the United States.

The Moree OTC Satellite Earth Station (pictured above) relayed the video of the Apollo 11 EVA from Australia to the United States, and was a key route for NASCOM transmission for Apollo missions.

The OTC hosted “Sydney Video”, the NASA video switching centre, on the first floor of its International Telecommunications Terminal in Oxford Street, Paddington, in the eastern suburbs of Sydney

The OTC HF Transmission (Doonside) and Receiving (Bringelly) stations in outer western Sydney supported the ARIA fleet while they operated in the Australian region.

The OTC maintained HF communications links between its Bassendean station in Perth and Tananarive in Madagascar to integrate Tananarive into the Manned Space Flight Network.

More to come in this section.