Transcript: Stephen Conroy's opening address to media

Staff Writers
Tuesday, 15 September 2009 14:22

IT Industry - Market

The following is a transcript of the opening address of Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy to a Media Conference at Parliament House, Canberra on Tuesday September 15.

STEPHEN CONROY: In April the Rudd Government embarked upon an ambitious program to fundamentally transform Australia’s telecommunications industry in the interest of all Australians.

The National Broadband Network will be the largest nation building investment in Australia’s history.

It will drive future growth, productivity and innovation across all sectors of the economy.

However, while the NBN is progressively rolled out around the country the existing telecommunications regulatory regime remains critical to the delivery of affordable, high quality services to businesses and consumers.

For years telecommunications companies, industry experts and the regulator have been calling for fundamental reforms in the telecommunications sector.

Today we are delivering historic reforms in Australia’s long-term national interest that will:

address Telstra’s high level of integration to promote greater competition and consumer benefits;

streamline and simplify the competition regime to provide more certain and quicker outcomes for telecommunications companies;

strengthen consumer safeguards to ensure service standards are maintained at a high level; and

remove inefficient regulatory red-tape.

[Vertical and Horizontal Integration ]

The first element of this reform program focuses on the current structure of the telecommunications sector.

Telstra is one of the most highly integrated telecommunications companies in the world.

While significant structural reform has occurred in other key infrastructure industries, previous governments of both persuasions have failed to undertake necessary structural and microeconomic reform in telecommunications.

The measures in this legislation will finally correct the mistakes of the past.

The Government will require the functional separation of Telstra, unless it decides to voluntarily structurally separate.

Functional separation is a regulatory tool that has been used successfully in other countries, including the UK and New Zealand.

It is designed to promote competition by addressing the underlying incentives for the incumbent to favour its own retail businesses over its wholesale customers.

The Government is also introducing measures to address Telstra’s horizontal integration across the copper, cable and mobile platforms.

CONTINUED