Telecommunications services are vital to participate in modern society. Business, education, health, social and safety activities all rely on connecting with others, and those without functional and reliable telecommunications services risk being left out. The Committee has released this issues paper, which provides an outline of key interest areas and invites submissions.

This report details the ACCC’s recommendations, actions and findings in relation to a broad range of communications services, including broadband and voice services, aggregation and transmission services, data centres and content delivery networks and the internet of things.

Australians have embraced data-intensive applications, such as video-on-demand (VOD) services. Households now reasonably expect that they will be able to use these applications on demand, at any time of day— and, by implication, that infrastructure, networks and services will have the capacity to deliver this.

The Government is disappointed that after considering 191 submissions; holding 15 public hearings; receiving testimony from 179 witnesses; and undertaking three site visits, the Committee’s majority report and recommendations indicates a failure to understand the fundamentals of the NBN.

The ACCC has released this discussion paper on Telstra’s proposed variation to the migration plan to facilitate the rollout of 'fibre to the curb' for the NBN, together with some other proposed variations to the plan.