Regulation Impact Statement – Department of Communications and the Arts
On 6 July 2018 the Minister for Communications directed the Australian Communications and Media Authority, in determining procedures to be applied for allocating spectrum in the 3.6 GHz band, to ensure that no person or specified group of persons may use more than an aggregate of 60 MHz of spectrum in each metropolitan area, or an aggregate of 80 MHz in each regional area, in the frequency range 3400-3700 MHz.
A Regulation Impact Statement (RIS) was prepared and certified by the Department of Communications and the Arts, and was assessed as compliant with the Government’s RIS requirements by the Office of Best Practice Regulation (OBPR).
However the OBPR concluded that to achieve best practice, the RIS should have included more of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) advice around competition. In particular, the RIS would have benefited from more detailed analysis about how the proposed competition limits balance the objectives of ensuring the spectrum is moved to its highest value use, against broader welfare considerations. The analysis in the RIS would also have benefited from clearer evidence that competition limits have worked in the past, and why ex post regulations set out in Parts XIB and XIC of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 are not sufficient for mitigating the risk of anti-competitive conduct.