Mitch Fifield racks up 1318 days as communications minister this morning, give or take the small period when he was technically resigned from the position during the August leadership transition last year. He has overseen most of the commercialisation of the NBN, with its activations growing from just over half a million to over five million on his watch. His tenure has also seen major media reforms, an expansion of “public interest” regulation over telcos and e-safety as well as the continued growth of mobile blackspot deployments. He agreed to this interview with CommsDay founder Grahame Lynch.
LYNCH: With the NBN entering the home straight in terms of design and construction, thoughts are beginning to turn to what comes next. Labor wants a review, if the Coalition is re-elected what will it do in terms of planning for the NBN post-completion era?
FIFIELD: The NBN has been a remarkable turnaround story. When the Coalition Government came into office in 2013, we inherited a failed project. Labor’s NBN rollout was in disarray. Contractors across the country had walked off the job and the NBN under Labor missed every rollout target it set for itself.
Under the Coalition, the NBN has connected more than 5.1 million premises at a rate of over 30,000 premises a week. The NBN is now available to more than 9 million homes and businesses. Whilst this progress has been nothing short of extraordinary, the next 12-18 months is a critical phase of the build. If the Coalition is re-elected, the priority in the first instance will be to continue to get the rollout delivered on time, on budget and above all, preserving customer experience.
NBN Co have been tasked with building the network within the peak funding envelope as a first and foremost priority. Incremental upgrades have always been part of the design of the multi-technology mix.
LYNCH: There have been some criticisms of overlapping or redundant regulation over NBN service standards. At the same time, RSPs are complaining that they have zero margins in reselling NBN. Are they two areas that deserve policy attention in the next parliament?
FIFIELD: The rollout of the NBN is a transformational undertaking that touches every home and business across the country. As a once in a hundred year transformation it is generating the biggest customer churn event, one that is recasting the telecommunications market in Australia.
It is important that consumers have a positive experience on the NBN, and the Government and industry recognise that a holistic and collaborative response is required. Over the past 18 months, the Government and the regulators have put in place comprehensive measures to ensure NBN customers get the level of service they expect from their retailers.
On 11 September 2018, the ACCC accepted a court enforceable undertaking from NBN Co to make changes to its wholesale service level requirements. The undertaking sets out changes to NBN Co’s standard contract with retailers, known as the wholesale broadband agreement, as well as specific reporting requirements.
As part of the undertaking, NBN Co will pay a $25 rebate to retailers for missed appointments (with customers) and where it fails to meet service standards for connections and repairs 100% of the time. Consistent with NBN Co’s undertaking, NBN Co has amended its wholesale broadband agreement to require retailers to take reasonable steps to pass on the fair value of the rebates to consumers.
Additionally, over the past 18 months, the Government and the regulators have put in place comprehensive measures to ensure NBN customers get the level of service they expect from their retailers.
The ACMA has introduced enforceable rules, backed by penalties, to address key consumer ‘challenge points’ on the NBN and is now undertaking a targeted program of monitoring to ensure industry compliance with the new requirements. According to its latest compliance report, released in early March, the ACMA has completed 38 investigations into compliance with the Complaints Handling Standard, and has issued warnings to 27 retailers and remedial directions to four.
The ACCC’s Measuring Broadband Australia program provides Australian consumers with accurate and independent information about broadband speeds. The fourth report of the program was released in February 2019 and for the first time, this latest report includes a breakdown of speed results by NBN technology. The report confirms that in 65% of tests undertaken, download speeds of above 90% of maximum plan speeds continue to be achieved across all technologies including FTTN.
The report also shows that broadband speeds did not slow significantly during busy evening hours (7-11pm) with average speeds reducing by less than two percentage points compared with the average.
Recent research by Alpha Beta confirms that Australia has one of the most affordable markets for broadband showing Australia is ranked 7th for affordability among 22 countries analysed. Alpha Beta looked not only at price, but affordability by looking at household capacity to pay – which is an important measure because it found that the median broadband price in Australia is equivalent to 1.4 per cent of of Australian per-capita income.
In addition, the ACCC’s Communications Market Report 2017-18 found that real retail prices for NBN plans dropped by 4% in the 2017-18 financial year, accounting for the rate of inflation in the rest of the economy.
NBN’s prices are not set in stone. The company is in an ongoing dialogue with retailers and has discounted its wholesale prices on multiple occasions. The cost of living matters to the Morrison Government. We’re rolling out the network as economically as possible. This is in sharp contrast to an all-fibre broadband policy which didn’t have any cost controls in place and was premised on people paying much higher prices for broadband.
The Coalition’s faster, more affordable NBN rollout is keeping your internet bills down and your taxes lower. Labor’s NBN would have pushed up a typical home internet bill by more than $500 a year.
LYNCH: One initiative under your watch was the establishment of a 5G council, the first time a comms minister has recognised the mobile sector in such a way. What needs to be done in the next parliament to continue that work and to bring 5G to reality?
FIFIELD: In October 2017, I released our strategy to support the timely rollout of 5G in Australia and announced the 5G Working Group. The Working Group is a platform for strategic dialogue with a mandate to seek out opportunities and emerging issues on 5G and consists of mobile carriers, equipment vendors, industry peak bodies, government representatives and subject matter experts.
The Working Group is a demonstration of this Government’s commitment to work with industry for the successful deployment of 5G in Australia, but that isn’t all we are doing.
Australians can’t enjoy 5G services and products unless the appropriate spectrum is made available to industry, so it is important that we enable early access to spectrum – which is why I reallocated the 3.6 GHz spectrum for 5G use and Australia’s first 5G spectrum auction was conducted in December last year. We are also supporting early consideration of the mmWave spectrum bands for 5G use in Australia.
We are actively engaging in international standardisation processes to ensure equipment and devices from the world’s leading vendors are suitable for use in Australia with minimal customisation, reducing purchase and deployment costs for Australian industry and consumers.
We are streamlining arrangements to allow mobile carriers to deploy infrastructure more quickly. In March 2018, we announced changes to carriers’ powers and immunities to reflect new technologies and deployment practices, and reduce the regulatory burden on telcos, and we will continue to work with telcos, property owner groups, public utilities, state and local governments and the TIO on proposed future reforms.
And finally, we are undertaking the most significant change to Australian spectrum management in the last 25 years. We are reviewing existing telecommunications regulatory arrangements to ensure they are fit-for-purpose for the 5G era. A clear, efficient and flexible regulatory framework governing spectrum access will be essential to support the timely deployment of 5G networks in Australia. Cutting red tape and removing barriers to rolling out new networks means Australians will benefit from faster and more affordable access to the benefits 5G will bring.
Industry stakeholders have made it clear to us that the proposed reforms should be progressed thoughtfully and with thorough consultation, and that this is much more important than the reforms being implemented quickly.
LYNCH: On a related note, there has been much talk about “broken concepts” and an overall regime that is not fit for the 21st century in the digital space. There’s been focused reviews on ACMA and the TIO and so on. Is there merit in something more holistic?
FIFIELD: The Government has pursued a comprehensive reform agenda. It’s ironic the Opposition has called for holistic reform when they opposed reform of 1980s media laws and opposed every effort to get their failed NBN rollout back on track. On both we succeeded despite Labor’s opposition. The ultimate vindication is that Labor have now adopted our NBN policy.
We are rolling out the NBN to completion by 2020 at 30 billion dollars less cost and six to eight years sooner than Labor’s plan, meaning Australians will save $500 per year on the internet bills; delivering a mobile black spot program that will provide greater mobile coverage in regional Australia; have reformed Australia’s media laws to better support our media against the global online giants; reforming copyright law to assist people with disabilities and educational institutions and better protect Australia’s creative industries; have established the world’s first eSafety commissioner and legislating take down regimes and penalties for kids cyberbullying and image based abuse; delivering real consumer benefits through the ACCC NBN speed monitoring regime and greater transparency in handling complaints through ACMA and a remorseless focus on improving NBN customer experience with retailers, and; laying the foundations for the rollout of 5G through an early spectrum auction, reformed carrier powers and immunities and a cross government/industry 5G working group.
We are putting in place a telecommunications Consumer Safeguards framework to make it a modern and flexible set of consumer protections that better respond to key issues of consumer concern, changing consumer expectations, advances in technology and evolving industry roles and responsibilities. The review is part of our broader agenda to modernise the telecommunications regulatory framework and ensure all Australians are well placed to thrive in the global digital economy.
We are revising Australia’s spectrum management legislation (as part of the broader package of spectrum framework reform) to simplify and streamline processes for spectrum allocation. These reforms will support transparent, efficient and flexible systems to more effectively respond to market demands and new technologies.
The Government delivered landmark media reforms that will allow Australia’s media sector to reorient their businesses to meet competition from digital platforms and global competitors. The package removed two control rules that failed to recognise new platforms and prevented Australian media companies from optimally structuring their businesses to compete in a global media environment. The package also implemented a significant and permanent ongoing financial injection into the broadcast industry through the abolition of licence fees.
The Government is committed to protecting Australia’s creative industries and the world-class content we produce each year, including through cracking down on online piracy. The Government’s Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Act 2018, which came into effect on 11 December 2018, will further strengthen the capacity of Australia’s creative industries to fight copyright infringement. The new laws enable the Federal Court to make injunctions that target a broader range of infringing websites, and provide a means to block pirate sites more quickly. The amendments also allow copyright owners to seek Federal Court orders requiring search engines to demote or remove search results for infringing sites. This strengthens the existing website blocking scheme introduced by the Government in 2015 which has been very successful in reducing online piracy, which deprives creative industries of their rightful income from legitimate purchases.
LYNCH: In recent months you have paid attention to the issues with social media and live streaming of violent acts. The ACCC has also been looking at digital players and their impact in Australian media markets. Do you think this will continue to be an increasing focus for communications regulation in the future?
FIFIELD: The Government is committed to ensuring digital players adapt to the changed expectations of the community and that we apply the same laws and standards in the online world as we do in the physical world.
The Government has been at the forefront of Online Safety regulation and has increased its investment in Online Safety each and every year in response to emerging issues and growing awareness. The funding for online safety through the Office of the eSafety Commissioner is now more than $100 million over the next four years. We have changed the law to give greater protection to law-abiding citizens and to punish the creeps and crooks that seek to do them harm.
The online world brings with it the ability to connect with people all over the world like never before. But with these opportunities comes new threats and challenges.
The Morrison Government is committed to a safer online environment for all Australians.
It is why we have taken a range of actions to crack down on online creeps and crooks as well as giving parents and carers the information and tools they need to ensure their children’s safety in the online world. And we have a comprehensive plan to do even more.
We understand that Australians expect the laws and standards of behaviour that apply in the physical world should equally apply in the online world. The internet should not be a lawless place in which creeps and crooks can flourish.
The safety of Australians is our first priority and we will continue to do what is necessary to ensure all Australians can communicate, work and learn online safely.
The Government acted to reflect the community’s view that the distribution of abhorrent violent material should not take place by bringing forward a focused piece of legislation that relates to a specific type of content.
It was the Government that commissioned the ACCC’s digital platforms inquiry, and we look forward to considering the ACCC’s findings and recommendations upon delivery of their final report.
LYNCH: Will communications be an important issue in this campaign? Do things like mobile blackspot funding and the NBN motivate people when it comes to choosing governments?
FIFIELD: Access to reliable and affordable telecommunications services will always be an important issue for the community. This Government recognises that a faster and more affordable rollout means better access to: online learning support for students, improved healthcare services for patients and doctors, and trade and job opportunities for people who want to connect and do business.
Labor acknowledge the network will be built by 2020 but they still fail to acknowledge their approach would have taken longer, cost more and seen Australians pay an average of $500 more on their annual household internet bills. The Coalition’s faster rollout of the NBN means Australians are being connected years earlier than they would have been under Labor.
Labor’s NBN policy is the final acknowledgement that the Coalition’s plan to use a range of technologies to see NBN completed 6 to 8 years sooner, and at $30 billion dollars less cost than Labor – has worked. Labor have finally accepted that doing what the rest of the world does, is the right answer.
The faster rollout means that many parts of regional and remote Australia are already accessing fast broadband for the very first time. In fact, because this Government took the approach to prioritise the most underserved areas of Australia, the NBN rollout in regional and remote Australia is close to complete.
With regards to mobile black spot funding, the Coalition Government recognises the importance of reliable mobile coverage to regional and rural Australia. That is why we have committed $380 million across six funding rounds of the Mobile Black Spot Program. Under the first three rounds of the program, 696 mobile base stations have been activated.
On 18 March 2019, the Coalition Government announced Round 4 of the program will deliver 180 new mobile base stations across Australia. This includes 73 new base stations that target coverage issues at Public Interest Premises, such as medical centres and tourist facilities.
With the Round 4 announcement, the Program is funding the delivery of 1047 new mobile base stations across the country.
To date, more than $760 million in total investment has been generated under the program. The investment made by the Coalition Government to incentivise the expansion of the commercial mobile networks is the most significant one-time increase in mobile network coverage to regional and remote Australia delivered by a single funding program in the history of mobile telecommunications.
Despite being in government for 6 years, Labor did not invest a single dollar into improving mobile coverage.
Editors note: CommsDay published an interview with shadow minister Michelle Rowland in our April 24 edition which is available online here: https://www.commsday.com/2019/04/23/interview-michelle-rowland/