The Australian Telecommunications Regulatory Environment: An overview

The Australian telecommunications regulatory environment has moved from the tentative deregulation of a managed fixed line duopoly to full deregulation and back to a state-owned enterprise being the monopoly wholesale provider of fixed broadband services. At the same time, the more lightly regulated mobile sector has continued to grow.This article provides an overview of the legal and regulatory regime for telecommunications and related services in Australia by charting the changes in regulation over this period and by indicating some of the changes that are evolving. The work is intended to provide a platform for comparison between regulatory regimes in different jurisdictions and as the basis for further analysis of the sector.