ACMA releases quarterly report

The ACMA has released its first Quarterly Snapshot, providing provisional headline information and data about its operations and customer satisfaction.

“Understanding the broad sweep of the ACMA’s responsibilities can be a challenge,” said ACMA Chairman Chris Chapman. “We have a complex regulatory remit spanning some 26 acts and around 400 regulatory instruments.

“Essentially, this report for the September quarter provides an ‘at a glance’ feel for the range of our activities — an insight that can sometimes be lost by our numerous stakeholders in the specifics of day-to-day engagement within the broadcasting, radiocommunications, telecommunications and internet industries.”

The report covers a wide range of topics. Those of most relevance to the critical communications sector are:

• In the category of transmitter licensing and compliance labelling arrangements, the ACMA concluded 71 investigations and undertook 210 enforcement actions.
• With spectrum operations, the ACMA completed 336 spectrum interference tasks, 40% of which led to compliance enforcement actions.
• In general licensing, the authority granted eight telecommunications carrier licences; issued 3888 new apparatus licences and 15 new broadcasting retransmission licences; renewed 41,523 apparatus licences, 22 commercial radio broadcasting licences and eight commercial television broadcasting licences; and varied six radio and television apparatus licences.
• As far as the ACMA’s regulation reform agenda goes, in the year to September 2015 it achieved savings of $3,566,564 for the government’s regulation reform agenda. In the September quarter, it saved $78,837 by remaking the radiocommunications licence conditions (broadcasting licence determination) and $49,632 by remaking the radiocommunications (maritime ship station — 27 MHz and VHF) class licence.

The authority also asked for stakeholder feedback on the topic of engagement. Overall for 2015, 64% were satisfied with ACMA’s engagement, 32% reported improved engagement and 84% were satisfied with ACMA staff knowledge and understanding of relevant policies and legislation.