Automatic Electric Telephones Pty. Ltd.
229 Castlereagh Street, Sydney. NSW (1936)
Kyle House, 31 Macquarie Place, Sydney, NSW, (1942)
86 Holdsworth Street, Woollahra, NSW. (1954)

Imported from the UK & USA and also manufactured automatic telephone exchange (Step by Step) and associated telephone equipment in Australia from the early 1920s.

The company was Australia agents’ Australian agent for Sylvania valves and CRT’s in the early 1960s. [2]

In May 1967 General Telephone & Electronics Intl., Inc.  acquired Automatic Electric Telephones Pty. Ltd., Australia [3]

Arthur A Burch from the Automatic Electric Co. of USA, traveled to Sydney in 1911 to demonstrate a model of automatic telephone equipment seen in Australia.

He succeeded in convincing the Commonwealth Government that it was a commercial proposition, and the consequence was that automatic telephones were in use in Australia sometime before the English Post Office adopted them.

In 1923 Mr. Burch introduced in Sydney the first English automatic equipment and when the company, Automatic Electric Telephones, Ltd. (Sydney), was formed in that year he became chairman and managing director. a position he held until his death in 1939.[1]

Australia standardized early on step-by-step, with most of its products sourced initially from the United States.

The first Post Office installation was at Geelong on 6th July 1912, making it the third public auto exchange outside the U.S., although the NSW Government Railways had an earlier one installed at their headquarters.

In 1925 the company provided telephone exchanges for Sydney, marking a switch to British sources for the Australian Post Office. In 1925 only a small number of exchanges were automatic because many of the manual exchanges were new and replacement could not be justified.

In May 1967 General Telephone & Electronics Intl., Inc.  acquired Automatic Electric Telephones Pty. Ltd., Australia [3]

[1] Sydney Morning Herald (NSW) Jul 17, 1939, Page 13.
[2] Radio Television & Hobbies Sep 1962, Page 18.
[3] Journal of The Telephone Industry  Jan-Jun 1967, Page 5.