The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, will next week launch two new industry reports at an AMTA Board breakfast at Parliament House.

AMTA Chief Executive Officer, Chris Althaus, said both reports would give an update on the dynamic and fast-growing mobile telecommunications industry and its significant and growing role as a driver of productivity across all sectors of the economy.

The AMTA Board breakfast will be held at Parliament House, Canberra, on Wednesday, June 16, 2010.

“We are very pleased that Senator Conroy has accepted our invitation to launch the new reports, which will highlight the growing economic contribution of our industry to the wider economy and the pressing requirement for timely access to sufficient spectrum in appropriate bands if Australia is going to fully capitalise on the industry’s flow-on productivity benefits,” Mr Althaus said.

Senator Conroy will release two reports commissioned by AMTA:

• Access Economics’ “Economic Contribution of Mobile Telecommunications in Australia”, highlights the key productivity-enabling role of mobile technology with its indirect flow-on to the wider economy. The report says rapid mobile data adoption is driving big productivity gains to the Australian economy.
  
   
   
• Network Strategies’ report, “The future deployment of mobile broadband services - 2.5Ghz in Australia”, estimates the gross productivity benefits of a 700MHz/2.5GHz combination and warns that the realization of potential benefits will depend on the availability of sufficient spectrum in appropriate bands. 

“These two new reports will give valuable new insights into our industry, which point to a growing productivity impact of the industry on the Australian economy over the next five years,” Mr Althaus said.