052/06
9 June 2006
Plan approved requiring Telstra to maintain bush presence
The Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan, today approved a plan to ensure Telstra maintains an ongoing local presence in regional, rural and remote Australia.
“The Local Presence Plan is a major element of the Australian Government’s commitment to ensuring Telstra maintains a real and ongoing presence in regional, rural and remote Australia,” Senator Coonan said.
“From the very beginning Telstra’s own Country Wide model has been held up as a good example of how we could ensure that people living in rural and regional Australia can continue access adequate telecommunications services.
“It is not about forcing Telstra to spend more money on services—it is about maintaining Telstra’s commitment to regional, rural and remote Australia. But Telstra’s Local Presence Plan must be tangible, it must be meaningful and it must be a genuine outline of how Telstra plans to meet its obligations in rural and regional Australia.
“This licence condition was never designed to be overly onerous on Telstra or too prescriptive. However, I rejected the previous draft plan because it did not contain enough detail or enough forward commitments. Telstra needed to establish the document as a commitment to future action rather than just a statement of current or past action.”
The Local Presence Plan is effective from 1 July 2006 and will be in force until June 2009. Telstra will be required to revise its plan and re-submit it to the Minister for approval every three years.
“This plan is a significant improvement. It contains 27 commitments regarding Telstra’s local presence in regional, rural and remote Australia—an increase of 10 extra commitments from the previous draft,” Senator Coonan said.
“The plan also details the benefits that each of the local presence commitments will deliver to people living in regional, rural and remote Australia.
“It contains more information about Telstra’s planned activities in regional, rural and remote Australia, and more detail about obtaining service level information. The plan represents a major step forward in ensuring Telstra’s continued commitment to rural and regional Australia.
Telstra must report annually on the progress of its Local Presence Plan with the first report due by August 2007. The Australian Communications and Media Authority will then assess Telstra’s reported performance against the plan.