Revisiting the Universal Service Obligation Scheme
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Keywords
history, telecommunications, NBN, Universal Service Obligations, USO
Abstract
In this Journal’s tradition of revisiting past papers which have relevance to today’s events, this article reminds us of the value of the paper “Better telecommunications services for all Australians.” (2015) by Reg Coutts. This paper makes five interrelated recommendations to replace the current Universal Service Obligation (USO) policy in Australia, given the NBN rollout and customer preference for mobile services anywhere anytime. Some of its recommendations were arguably taken up by the Productivity Commission’s Public Inquiry into the USO in 2016-17, and implemented by the Australian Government in the form of a new Universal Service Guarantee.
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References
Fifield, M. (2017). Turnbull Government to improve regional telecoms delivery with new Universal Service Guarantee, Media Release, 20 December 2017. Available at https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20180615055705/http://www.minister.communications.gov.au/mitch_fifield/news/turnbull_government_to_improve_regional_telecoms_delivery_with_new_universal_service_guarantee
Gerrand, P. (2021). Emeritus Professor Reginald Paul (Reg) Coutts (1949-2021), Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, 9(3), 186–193. https://doi.org/10.18080/jtde.v9n3.448
Productivity Commission. (2017). Telecommunications Universal Service Obligation, Report No. 83, Canberra. Available at https://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/telecommunications/report/telecommunications.pdf
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Copyright Telecommunications Association Inc.
Simon Moorhead, Ericsson Australia and New Zealand
Simon is Commercial Manager at Ericsson Australia & New Zealand. He has over 35 years experience in the telecommunications industry in a number of technology and commercial roles. Simon is interested in telecommunications history and is currently assisting the Editors of this Journal with researching historical papers from the Telecommunications Journal of Australia.
