ISSN: 1329-878X

Australian Telecommunications: Liberalising, Privatising, Reregulating No 96 August 2000 Order form Abstracts

Contents

Abstracts

Australian telecommunications: Liberalising, privatising, reregulating - Jock Given and Gerard Goggin
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, one of the prerequisites for a country's membership of the International Telecommunications Union was that its telecommunications services were provided by a public monopoly. The United States, with its private industry and - particularly following the expiry of the Bell System patents - its open competition, could participate only as an observer.

Back to the future - Terry Cutler
A quarter of a century ago, Telstra’s predecessor — Telecom Australia — attempted something that would be unthinkable in today’s environment: it set out to provide a roadmap to the industry future 25 years ahead. Telecom 2000 fairly accurately predicted the major developments in technology, but was less successful in anticipating the changes in industry economics and structure, and the contest between market forces and the then-prevailing public utility model of service delivery. This article reviews the Telecom 2000 report and identifies the key challenges which remain to be addressed before Australia can capture the full benefits of the new digital era.

Introducing competition into Australian telecommunications - Senator Richard Alston
Australia's telecommunications regime has been developed over several years with the clear intention of facilitating robust competition, while also providing a raft of consumer safeguards. After introducing elements of competition in the 1980s, the government was able to gradually increase the level of competition, until the introduction of full competition in the Telecommunications Act 1997. Since then, the government has encouraged a stronger competitive environment by strengthening the powers of the ACCC. It has also improved consumer protection safeguards through the enactment of the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Services Standards) Act 1999. Further refining of the regime will not end here. The government will continue to review competition and consumer policy and continue to promote liberalised trade in telecommunications markets.

The elusive mirage: Competition regulation and telecommunications, 1997-2000 - Peter Leonard
This paper looks at the operation of telecommunications-specific competition regulation pursuant to the 1997 legislation, on the eve of a review of the 1997 legislation by the Productivity Commission. The central thesis is that the 'brave new world' created by the 1997 legislation, of industry self-regulation of terms and conditions of access to declared telecommunications services, has been an inhospitable land for new entrants. Neither the access nor the competitive conduct provisions have operated in the way intended by the policy-makers and anticipated by new entrants at the time of introduction of the 1997 legislation. The tools of competitive conduct regulation at the retail level have proven cumbersome and susceptible to challenge. Instead of a rapid withering away of market power under threatened or actual market entry, the emergence of the Internet and commercial deployment of digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies has meant that Telstra's ability to cross-market leverage may actually have increased and extended beyond the telephony sphere. Finally, the paper identifies key issues for the Productivity Commission's review.

Mobile telecommunications in Australia: Policy frameworks and regulatory directions  - Mike Bradley and Mitchell Landrigan
This article assesses the relationship between mobile telephony, communications policy and regulation in Australia. It considers the impact of spectrum policy and regulatory decisions on competition and investment in mobile telephony services. The significance of such policies concerning the potential for convergence between mobile services and other services is considered. The regulatory policies affecting mobile telephony services are examined and are contrasted with those applying to fixed network services. It is contended that mobile telephony services in Australia are highly competitive, yet these results have not been achieved by using the regulatory instruments that are used for fixed network telephony. Moreover, the authors propose that using the same instruments for mobile telephony services as for fixed network services may constrain the growth of competition for mobile telephony and/or delay the emergence of mobile telephony services into the world of convergence.

Competition and consumers in telecommunications: Industry-specific competition  - Allan Fels
With the introduction of telecommunications-specific competition regulation in July 1997, the Australian telecommunications industry began a transition which is transforming its structure and operations. Under amendments to the Trade Practices Act, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission was given responsibility for applying the regulation, which established an access regime and special powers in relation to anti-competitive conduct. In this article, the Commission's chairman, Professor Allan Fels, summarises the operation of the regime over the last three years and outlines the Commission's major decisions and approaches. In a year when the regulation is subject to review, he also expresses some views on the issues which will influence future regulatory directions in telecommunications.

Choosing telecommunications? Consumers in a liberalised, privatised telecommunications sector  - Helen Campbell
Consumers were promised that the introduction of open competition in the Australian market would bring greater choices and cheaper prices. This article considers how residential consumers have fared in a liberalised, privatised Australian telecommunications sector in the 1990s. It finds that, while consumers in general have enjoyed considerable benefits from liberalised, competitive telecommunications markets, especially in terms of wider choices and price reductions, not all consumers have shared in the benefits. Indeed, equitable, affordable access to a service supported by common standards of quality and reliability is under threat from the demands of market-based competition. Producing service quality indicators and consultation structures appropriate to the expression of consumer concerns will be essential to ensure that consumers benefit from competition in telecommunications.

Scott v. Telstra: A watershed in Australian telecommunication policy - Michael Bourk
In Australia, the Universal Service Obligation (USO) operates as a legislative mechanism that guarantees the right of all Australians to access a standard telephone service wherever they reside. In 1997, special provisions for people with severe hearing impairment were added to telecommunication legislation. The Telecommunications Act 1997 included a specific reference to teletypewriters (TTYs), including them as an addition to the definition of the Universal Service Obligation (USO) as the result of the outcome from a public inquiry held in 1995. The inquiry, subsequently referred to as Scott v. Telstra, is a case study illustrating the collision of two separate pieces of federal legislation and the paradigms that formed them. Furthermore, both the inquiry and subsequent revision of definitions of a standard telephone service illustrate the complexity of planning telecommunication policy for equitable social outcomes. Specifically, further questions are raised surrounding the role of universal service in changing technological and competitive environments.

Crippling competition: Critical reflections on disability and Australian telecommunications policy - Gerard Goggin and Christopher Newell
Telecommunications reform in Australia, and in particular the introduction of competition, is often claimed to have delivered benefits to consumers. From the perspective of people with disability, this competition so far can been seen as crippling rather than enabling. There have been some gains for telecommunications for people with disabilities over the past decade in particular - delivered by slowly changing corporate attitudes buttressed by the explicit reference to the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 in the Telecommunications Act 1997. This article examines telecommunications and disability in Australia since 1975, and concludes that it is high time for a telecommunications and new media industry where measures of outcomes would include utilising the experiences and meeting the needs, expectations and aspirations of those who live with disability.

Universal service and telecommunications competition  - Ros Eason
In reforming the regulation of Australian telecommunications over the last decade, successive governments have stressed that traditional community service goals would not be sacrificed. One of the most critical has been the Universal Service Obligation, which aims to make basic services accessible throughout Australia. This article explores the tensions inherent in the marriage between an ostensibly egalitarian social policy and a competitive market model, and criticises the increasing politicisation of decisions about universal service. It examines the treatment of universal service in the report of the National Bandwidth Inquiry, which, the author argues, implies an unravelling of the national project represented by the current universal service regime. She questions the extent to which Australians are likely to tolerate such an outcome.

The telecommunications policy process  - Trevor Barr
A fundamental power shift is underway in contemporary Australia - the deconstruction of the role of the state in ownership, policy and strategic thinking for the future. In telecommunications policy, we have replaced strategic thinking for the nation with ad hoc strategic planning by an array of intensely competitive companies. This article argues that we need to widen the framework of a plethora of public-interest groups pushing narrow sectional interest to much wider inputs in the overall policy process. We need to foster imaginative attempts at constructing national plans - of many different kinds - for Australia's communications future.

Revisiting the future: assessing the 1994 BTCE Communications Futures Project -  David Luck
In 1994, the former Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics undertook a major study for the Australian government on likely developments in online services over the decade to 2005. At the time, there was a wide level of industry 'hype' about the imminent arrival of broadband services to the home. It was also a crucial time for the Australian government in formulating a range of policies - to encourage competition in the newly opening telecommunications market, to help bring to birth the new pay TV industry and to set the scene for mobile telephony. The CFP provided an economic analysis of these new technologies and the directions in which they might be heading. This paper assesses the extent to which the government research body 'got it right' and analyses why it was successful and where it missed the mark. Some of the reasons for the successes and failures illustrate the potential for analytical research to guide governments in their policy formulation.

Communications deregulation and democratisation in Thailand - Glen Lewis and Peter Thompson
This article considers recent Thai communication policy debates as a case study of some of the tensions in Asian communications regulation. Thailand is now reregulating its communications after a period of boom and bust. With the new 1997 Constitution, there is an expectation that regulation should ensure more public oversight of telecoms and broadcasting, formerly the province of state agencies, the army and big business. One problem for reformers, however, is the prospect of telecom and broadcasting regulation being combined. Another issue is that, as the power of the army and the state agencies is being challenged, new private monopolies are replacing them. After locating Thai experience in its regional context, the article examines the main telecom and broadcasting policy issues in the 1990s. It argues, pace the view that communications deregulation promotes efficiency and national development, that it may reinforce social inequality in developing countries.

Authority versus seduction: The use of voice-overs in New Zealand and French television advertising  - Fabrice Desmarais
Cross-cultural content analysis of New Zealand and French television advertising has revealed marked differences in the use of voice-overs. New Zealand voice-overs were found to be mostly authoritative and adhered to a strong code of masculinity whereas French voice-overs used a more seductive approach, utilising more feminine voices which acted as a relay of masculine values. Interviews with creative directors suggested that the selection of a voice-over was influenced by strong cultural stereotypes and was mostly the result of a subconscious or mechanical choice. This paper argues that voice-overs are signifiers which are embedded in a cultural and communicative context. It also draws attention to the usually unsuspected presence of highly naturalised 'vocal formations' which exist in the advertising discourse of each country, shaping and subjecting us as sociocultural beings.

He lies like a rug: Digitising memory - Tara Brabazon
With most critical and historical interpretations of the Internet trapped between the ideologies of technophilia and the progress, little attention is being placed on the digital future of the analogue past. This paper evaluates contemporary notions of cataloguing, preservation and memory. However, most stress is placed on how the passions and enthusiasm of popular culture are tempered through digitisation.

I built the first electronic digital computer and the prototype was finished up in October or November 1939.

- John Vincent Atanasoff

He lies like a rug.

— J. Presper Eckert (Shurkin, 1996: 93)

Service and access: The role of the National Library of Australia - Anne Galligan
The cultural politics associated with the National Library of Australia (NLA) as a storehouse of the national textual capital is today infused with a symbolism and rhetoric that exert considerable power in any discourse concerning the cultural state of the nation. The role of the National Library is of particular interest in that it is a service institution, but also a major cultural institution, a strategic element in the Commonwealth government’s cultural policy. According to policy documents, the National Library exists to record the Australian cultural heritage, to provide a ‘crucial resource in the formation of our culture and national identity and provide a foundation for further advancement of the nation’. Within the National Library there have been a series of philosophic shifts and changes to future planning and development strategies in response to various government policy imperatives and economic contingencies. This paper will investigate the external and internal pressures and philosophies that work to change or reinforce the position of the National Library of Australia as a major cultural institution.