AMTA attended a meeting yesterday hosted by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, to discuss the establishment of a peak telecommunications body representing consumer interests.

AMTA Chief Executive Officer, Chris Althaus, said the mobile telecommunications industry supported moves to ensure that the voice of consumers was adequately represented in the forums of government.

“Our industry is committed to being involved in the development of an effective and strong consumer voice. The industry can only benefit from the existence of a strong consumer representative,” he said.

“This does not necessarily mean more regulation. New technology can provide new tools to give consumers more protection and empowerment.”

Mr Althaus said AMTA was committed to understanding the needs and practices of consumers to provide solid evidence-based grounds for policies through research projects, such as the joint AMTA-ANU Australian Research Council Linkage project, to provide an understanding of the social impact of the mobile phone on work/life balance.

The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, welcomed the commitment from consumer representatives to establish a peak telecommunications body representing the diversity of consumer interests.

Senator Conroy and telecommunications consumer stakeholders met today to discuss ways to make consumer representation in telecommunications policy making more effective.

“Telecommunications consumers face an environment of continual technological change, globalisation, evolving market structures and new business models,” Senator Conroy said.

“We need well-informed consumers to make well-informed product and service choices and I heard a lot of very interesting views today from a range of stakeholders from consumer representatives, industry and other government bodies.

“Addressing consumer issues is a challenge but the first step to tackle it will be to improve current consumer representation strategies to give consumers a stronger unified voice.

“Working together to empower consumer representation and to improve the interface between consumer groups, industry, and strengthen the self-regulatory regime will result in better outcomes and better informed consumers.

“Better informed consumers will result in better outcomes for industry.”