From:

AARNer 20 yearbook pg. 30

Raising the money

While the international links were developing and Huston was working on the technical side of the network, McKinnon was leading a push to put together sufficient funding for the proposal. The AVCC also tried to get Telstra (then known as Telecom) involved in sponsoring the project. But like their forebears in the US had found with AT&T, there was little interest in the new concept from the phone company monopoly. Geoff Huston comments: “Telstra could have owned it from day one. We were struggling to get the money to do it.” Greg Batchelor remembers visiting Telecom’s head office in Melbourne to try to convince them to become involved. “We were trying to ensure the funding for the network in the early days. I had a meeting with senior management at Telstra. I remember sitting in the 45th floor of Telstra headquarters in Exhibition Street in Melbourne saying: ‘You guys should be part of this. It’s going to be the communication of the future’. The person I was talking with said that they didn’t think network communications were ever going to take off. Telstra’s main focus was voice. They didn’t think that data communications would take over from voice. I said ‘I think you’re wrong. You are going to eat your words’.

Pg. 37

37 Left AVCC members, 1990–1. of AARNet in Australia was watched closely by Boeing Computer Services (BCS), a subsidiary of the giant US aerospace company based in Washington State. Originally formed from the different computing organisations within Boeing, BCS developed as an independent subsidiary. It serviced external clients and had installed the national telecommunications network for NASA in the US. In May 1990, just as AARNet was being connected, McKinnon received a visit from five senior executives of BCS. He recalls a most interesting encounter: “They had gone to the Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, and said they would take over this expensive thing called AARNet to help the government out. Five of them came down to Wollongong to say that the Government had agreed they should take it over. What date would suit? I raised an eyebrow and asked if I could see the documents. No documents, they said, but I could ring XXX in the Prime Minister’s Department if I needed reassurance. I mentioned that universities were independent from the government. They responded: ‘Yes. But they are funded by the public purse’. I responded by saying: ‘So what?’ They simply could not understand that universities were independent from government and not swayed by that sort of naked pressure. I did give them a good lunch and kept talking jovially while they continued trying to apply pretty unvarnished pressure. Eventually they departed, advising that they would be back when things were clearer. I never heard any more.”