Under Part XIB, Division 11, s. 151CL(1) of the Trade Practices Act 1974, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is required to provide the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts with an annual report on competitive safeguards within the Australian telecommunications industry. This report (known as the Division 11 report), covering the financial year 2005–06 and ongoing actions immediately afterwards, is provided as an attachment below.
There were some noteworthy developments in the telecommunications industry in 2005-06. Users benefited from significant investment by numerous competing carriers in 3G mobile infrastructure and broadband-enabling equipment. However, competition in the industry was to some degree underpinned by regulation. Any unforeseen changes to the price and availability of access services could materially alter the state of competition. Investment by competing carriers also remains at risk from prospective fibre-to-the-node network upgrades.
Division 12 of Part XIB of the Trade Practices Act 1974 requires the ACCC to report each year to the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts on prices paid by Australian consumers for telecommunications services. This report (known as the Division 12 report) for the 2005–06 financial year is also provided as an attachment below.
The Division 12 report monitors prices consumers pay for PSTN (public switched telephone network) services and mobile telephony services. For PSTN services, it analyses prices paid by residential and business consumers for basic access service (or line rental) and for local, national long-distance, international and fixed-to-mobile calls. For mobile telephony services, this report covers prices paid by consumers for services on the global system for mobiles (GSM) and code division multiple access (CDMA) networks.
