Better Telecommunications Services for all Australians
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Keywords
Telecommunications, Universal Service,
Abstract
The Universal Service Obligation (USO) scheme we have in place in Australia in 2015 was put in place over 25 years ago when the world was very different than what it is today. The paper documents how the current USO entrenches an annual subsidy of some $300 to Telstra to provide a standard telephone service over an aging copper infrastructure to regional and remote premises across Australia. The current expensive USO scheme is inadequate for people in remote and regional Australia and in the light of the NBN roll out and the demand for mobile services is in urgent need of review. The paper reviews the approach taken to providing high cost telecommunications services in rural areas both developed and developing economies across the world and draws lessons for devising a basis for a way forward. Given the now bipartisan acceptance of the rural and remote component of the NBN roll out and drawing on these lessons, now is the opportunity to scrap the current USO scheme and establish a Universal Service Fund (USF) where the NBN is the Universal Infrastructure wholesale provider with alternative retailers. The paper supports five practical interrelated recommendations that diverts current USO funding to ensure broadband and mobile services extension in rural and remote Australia as well as reimagining future payphones around public WiFi and rural community innovation.
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References
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Article Details
Copyright Telecommunications Association Inc.
Reg Coutts, Coutts Communications
Reg Coutts’ career spans over 35 years in the telecommunications industry. After completing his PhD in communications engineering in 1976, Reg began working in the research labs of what was then Telecom. Reg was involved in the early developments of 3G mobile technologies with the International Telecommunications Union.
In the 1980s Reg moved to an executive management role in the new mobiles division of Telecom as the national manager strategy. In 1993 Reg took up the inaugural chair in telecommunications at the University of Adelaide. Following this Professor Coutts formed his own company, Coutts Communications and founded Red Button Technologies in 2006.
In 2008 Reg was appointed a member of the Government’s Expert Panel on the National Broadband Network (NBN). In October 2010 Reg was appointed to the Australian Communications and Media Authority and served as a member of the Authority until 2014.
Currently Reg is an Emeritus Professor of Telecommunications of the University of Adelaide, and is Chair of the Telecommunications Association (TelSoc). Reg is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
