Coonan to force Telstra to keep CDMA operating

Stuart Corner
Monday, 06 August 2007 12:44

IT Policy - Regulation

"Telstra has advised that it will not be able to say whether it has delivered equivalent or better coverage until 15 October this year before their planned shut down of the network on 28 January 2008. This is simply not enough time to ensure that their public commitments have been met. ACMA needs 12 weeks to complete the audits and the Government needs time to consider the findings. The Government must act now to protect regional and rural Australians."

However she would have been well aware of this time frame for some time. Telstra's initial completion date was the end of 2007 and it was only on 13 July that it said the network would be ready by mid October.

When the ACMA announced the appointment of Melbourne based Zamro International to conduct the first audit, in November 2006, it said: "The next phase will be the survey of coverage provided by [Next G], after Telstra informs ACMA that the new system has been adequately deployed. Although the WCDMA system has been launched by Telstra during 2006, it is expected that significant upgrades and fine tuning will take place during 2007, and that the system will be ready for a benchmarking survey toward the end of 2007."

ACMA said: "After the survey of [Next G] has occurred and test data analysed, a comparison can be made between the coverage provided by both systems, and a judgement made on their level of equivalence. ACMA will then report to the minister for communications, information technology and the arts on the audit results."

However the ability to of the ACMA audit to deliver a reliable assessment must be questioned. In a Senate Estimates Committee hearing in May 2007 Giles Tanner, the ACMA's general manager, inputs to industry, told shadow communications minister Stephen Conroy that "The audit...is about 100 cells over a route of several thousand kilometres of the 3G network."

Under subsequent questioning from Conroy, Tanner revealed that the entire audit had been completed in just eight days and that coverage was not assessed in Tasmania, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

Coonan claims to have received anecdotal feedback that coverage is not comparable. "I have just spent the last six weeks on the road across Australia and based on the level of frustration in the community, it is clear that this issue needs Telstra's urgent and genuine attention."

Telstra however refutes the allegations and says its offer to MPs to take Telstra technicians out to alleged 'black spots' has been taken up by only two.