AMTA Snapshot Edition 61

Content Services Bill Introduced The long awaited Content Services Bill was introduced into Federal Parliament yesterday (May 10). AMTA is currently analysing the Bill to understand how closely it reflects the substantial input provided by industry during its development. Central to AMTA’s analysis will be the extent to which the Bill provides for industry codes of practice such as the MPSI Scheme approved by ACMA in October 2006.

New Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman appointed Ms Deirdre O’Donnell has been appointed as the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman and will start work on Tuesday 29 May. Ms O’Donnell will succeed Mr John Pinnock, who has served the telecommunications industry with distinction for 12 years. Mr Pinnock has decided not to renew his term of office and will finish work at the end of May.

More than half a million Australians say ‘no’ to unwanted telemarketing calls Senator Helen Coonan, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, yesterday announced registrations on the Do Not Call Register were over 530,000, just one week after pre-registrations opened on 3 May.

Australia’s business community shows support for MobileMuster Major Australian corporations are getting behind MobileMuster by encouraging their employees to recycle mobile phones, batteries and accessories.

Consumers and industry disadvantaged by complex regulatory arrangements The telecommunications industry operates under a complex co-regulatory model where overlap and inconsistency between jurisdictions and government agencies, inadequate stakeholder consultation and poor enforcement of existing regulation lead to less than optimal outcomes, AMTA says in a submission to the Productivity Commission review of the consumer policy framework.

Mobile phone handset figures for April 2007 There were more than 773,500 mobile phone handsets shipped to Australia in April 2007, taking the total for the first four months of 2007 to 2.23 million handsets.

Preparing and understanding the Revised Environmental EME Report Format A Revised Environmental EME Report has been developed by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) to ensure that information about mobile phone base stations and levels of electromagnetic energy (EME) are clearly provided to interested stakeholders. The new format will be progressively introduced by 1 July 2007 when full implementation will be achieved.

Consumers to benefit from increased support for the communications regulator The Australian Government will provide an additional $16.3 million over four years for the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), bringing the total funding for ACMA to more than $360 million over four years.

Too busy watching mobile TV to answer the big unanswered question Research firm Screen Digest forecasts that mobile TV will put gaming and music in the shade. It predicted that there will be 140 million global subscribers generating revenue of £3.1bn by 2011 as reported in this week's CTIA Smartbrief.