The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today began a wide-ranging review of the regulation of Australian mobile telephone services by issuing a discussion paper on the industry.
The review will focus on the wholesale mobile termination, wholesale mobile origination, domestic and international roaming, and emerging third-generation (3G) services.
"The review would provide a welcome opportunity to consider the level of regulation of mobile telephone services", ACCC Commissioner responsible for telecommunications, Mr Ross Jones, said today.
"The ACCC sees this as an opportunity to examine the extent and need for regulation in the mobile services industry so that consumers can enjoy the full benefit of the growing array of existing, and new mobile services that will be available over the next few years.
"The ACCC is particularly interested in whether it should continue to regulate the pricing of the wholesale mobile termination service".
The wholesale mobile termination service is used to provide fixed-to-mobile and mobile-to-mobile calls. For instance, in the case of a mobile-to-mobile call, when a customer on Vodafone's mobile network calls someone on a Telstra network, Vodafone would purchase wholesale access to Telstra's mobile termination service in order to connect the call from its customer to Telstra's customer.
"The review fulfils an ACCC commitment, made at the time of the issuing of the pricing approach for the wholesale mobile termination service, that it would review its regulation of this service in two years' time.
"The pricing of the wholesale mobile termination service has been a major issue in Europe, where regulators have taken a much more direct role in setting prices than the ACCC.
"This issue is of particular concern as the prices consumers pay to make calls from a fixed line phone to somebody on a mobile phone have remained fairly static, while the prices for other fixed line services like national and international long distance calls have fallen considerably.
"The ACCC has decided to investigate the wholesale origination service at the same time as it expects many of the relevant issues will be identical to the wholesale terminating service".
The ACCC will also investigate the regulation of domestic and international intercarrier roaming services.
"The ACCC considers the regulation of international intercarrier roaming to be particularly important as it receives a large volume of complaints from consumers about the high cost of this service. The service allows consumers to use their mobile handset whilst travelling overseas.
"The aim of this part of the review will be to investigate whether there are any legitimate concerns about the price of this service and to determine what steps can be taken to address these concerns".
The final area for consideration is the impact upon the regulation of 3G services.
"The review will give interested parties an opportunity to comment on whether the emergence of these new services and technologies is likely to raise any new regulatory issues that the ACCC should consider".
Interested parties have until 13 June 2003 to make submissions addressing any of the issues contained in the ACCC's discussion paper.