Quality and availability of the Standard Telephone Service

Australia’s elaborate legislative guarantees around fixed-line phone service availability are evidence of the historic social consensus that access to a phone is a universal right and an essential feature of an industrialised society. It would be unfortunate if the construction of a new access network in the form of the National Broadband Network (NBN), designed to enhance Australia’s technological prowess in the digital age, were to have the effect of reducing the quality or availability of the basic fixed-line phone service, which remains today the taken-for-granted service.