Campaign objectives

The inspiration for Telstra’s Broadband Australia Campaign came from Telstra shareholders, employees and community members who, like Telstra, are passionate about delivering high-speed broadband to Australians.

Telstra has a comprehensive plan to provide high-speed broadband to Australians. This campaign is about enabling Telstra to provide Australia with world-class broadband technology.

What are we campaigning for?

The ability to invest in high-speed broadband infrastructure, which will ensure Australia's continued economic prosperity and will:

• Boost productivity growth
• Expand economic opportunity
• Promote regional development beyond the big cities

A high-speed broadband network that will benefit the entire telecommunications industry

• Telstra’s proposed new fibre based network would be an open access network, available to all carriers, who will have access on terms and conditions equivalent to that of Telstra retail.

Stand up for the vulnerable

• Especially people and communities located in regional, rural, and remote Australia.
• Small and mid-sized businesses and non-profit organisations country-wide rely on public networks to provide high-speed broadband connectivity to create jobs, increase productivity, and compete in domestic and global markets.

Defend Telstra shareholders' returns

• Ensure the savings of Telstra's 1.5 million shareholders are not subject to unreasonable regulatory risk and that shareholder returns are not siphoned off to foreign-owned companies by the policies and practices of the Australian regulator.

Get the ACCC to honour government policy direction

• Reverse the ACCC's urban-centric focus.
• Make sure the regulator changes to follow the policies of the government that call for “national uniform pricing” of telecommunications services, which means that people in the bush pay the same as the people in the capital cities.
• The ACCC continues to advance positions based on economic theory that call for higher prices in the bush and lower prices in the cities – a position that violates a long-standing social contract in Australia where people take care of each other, no matter where they live.

What’s wrong with telecommunications regulation?

The current regulatory regime is holding Australia back. There is not enough investment in new infrastructure because regulated access prices provide a disincentive to Telstra AND Telstra’s competitors to invest.

• Telstra is reluctant to invest in new networks and services when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) can force it to provide access to competitors at prices that don’t allow Telstra to make a competitive return.
• Telstra’s foreign competitors are not investing in new infrastructure because they get cheap access to Telstra’s networks from the ACCC. Why build when it is easier and cheaper to rely on the ACCC to provide access to Telstra?

The regime does not provide any investment certainty for Telstra. Even when the ACCC makes decisions about prices or what services to regulate, it can change its mind at any time.

Telstra’s shareholders are forced to bear the cost for ACCC actions and the regulatory regime:

• When prices are set below cost, Telstra’s shareholders pick up the difference;
• Telstra’s shareholders are paying the shortfall in funding high-cost rural services because the Government has arbitrarily set the Universal Service Obligation (USO) levy at a level that nowhere near reflects the actual costs of providing these services to some of the most remote and difficult terrain in the world.
• Telstra’s shareholders are forced to directly pay for a number of government social policies, like free residential directory assistance, low income support and emergency 000 that do not apply to any of Telstra’s competitors. These are all important social obligations, but why should Telstra’s shareholders pay for them rather than the government or the entire industry?

What’s the solution?

Telstra needs immediate action that will:

1. Ensure that regulated access prices enable Telstra to fully recover its costs and achieve a competitive return on its investments;
2. Give Telstra the upfront regulatory certainty required to make major infrastructure investments to provide Australia with high-speed broadband;
3. Ensure that the actual cost of providing high cost services in rural and remote Australia is recognised and fairly shared across the industry; and
4. Ensure that all social obligations apply equally across the industry or are met by government, rather than being borne by Telstra shareholders.

Parts XIB and XIC of the Trade Practices Act are outdated and are holding back investment in the critical national infrastructure required to deliver high-speed broadband to Australians.

They were put in place on a temporary basis ten years ago, have long passed their use-by date and need to be repealed so that Telstra is treated like all other companies in the Australian economy.

Authorised by L McGregor, Telstra Corporation Limited, 242 Exhibition Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000