Public interest and price - great unknowns in mobile spectrum renewal

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 04 March 2010 14:18

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

Communications minister Stephen Conroy has commited the Government to offering renewal of their spectrum licences to Australian mobile network operators when their current licences expire but subject to how well they satisfy vaguely defined public interest criteria, only one of which is price.

In a speech to the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Industry Association (AMTA) last night, 3 March, Conroy said: "I am pleased to announce today that the Government has endorsed a forward process to address this important issue. Licence renewal will be offered to those incumbents who are using their licences to provide services to significant numbers of Australian consumers '¦ or have in place networks capable of providing services to a significant number of consumers.

"That means we will offer license renewal to the major telecommunications providers - Telstra, Optus, Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) and Unwired (Vividwireless Australia)."

He pointed out that, in the legislation, "Auction is the default option for licence re-issue" but said "There is also an ability for the minister to issue a determination to ACMA specifying a class of services for which renewal of spectrum to the incumbent would be considered to be in the public interest [but] the legislation limits ministerial-renewal powers to those licenses that have been used."

To enable the government to exploit this 'loophole' in the legislation DBCDE last April issued a discussion paper Public Interest Criteria for re-issue of Spectrum Licences. The paper noted that "There is no clear definition of public interest in the [Radiocommunications] Act, nor is there guidance provided in secondary legislative material. The absence of a definition provides some scope for the interpretation of public interest when applied to spectrum licences."

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