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The Government will amend the telecommunications specific access and anti-competitive conduct provisions of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (TPA) to provide greater certainty for new investments, ensure quicker and more certain regulatory decision-making and improve the operation of the telecommunications access regime. 

Building on the existing provisions that allow any company to obtain an exemption or agree regulatory conditions with the ACCC prior to making investments, the government will legislate to require the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to take account of the costs and risks of new investment when making decisions under the telecommunications access regime.

To clarify and speed up decision making by the ACCC, the Government will be streamlining the ACCC processes and requiring the ACCC to prepare procedural rules setting out how it will handle processes for declaring new services, assessing access undertakings and arbitrating access pricing disputes. These rules will cover the procedural detail of how the ACCC executes its functions under the access regime and will include:

• public consultation processes;
• the exercise of the ACCC’s discretion about considering access undertakings and resolving access disputes;
• matters affecting the period of time available to the ACCC to make decisions under different provisions; and
• a generic confidentiality regime to apply in consideration of access exemptions, access undertakings and access disputes.

These rules will provide a mechanism through which transparency and consistency of ACCC decisions can be enhanced and will assist in providing more timely access to services.

Amendments will also be made to the Telecommunications Act 1997 to provide for full interconnection of carrier networks. This will give greater certainty to potential network investors and ensure that they will be able to provide any‑to‑any connectivity to customers.

The ACCC will receive additional resources to support its telecommunications group.

The competition reform package also includes enforcement provisions that will give the Federal Court the power to ensure compliance with conditions attached to exemptions and introduce increased penalties for a breach of the competition rule under Part XIB of the TPA. This approach is consistent with proposed changes to the penalties under Part IV of the TPA.  

Several minor amendments to the regulatory framework will also be made to make improvements and provide clarification.

The Government will review the competition regulatory regime in 2009.

• Document ID: 30311 |
• Last modified: 5 February 2008, 7:19pm