Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the senator for her question. She is someone who has genuinely followed these issues over a very long period of time. On 18 January this year I notified Telstra that at that point in time I was not in a position to declare equivalence between the Next G network and the CDMA network. My decision was based upon an ACMA report which found that, while the footprint of the coverage was equivalent, there were issues around, particularly, handsets. For that reason, I said, ‘We can’t proceed with your close-down on 28 January.’ My department had also conducted a shoppers survey—going around many Telstra stores and posing as customers to see what sort of advice was given to the customer about what the handsets were. After all of that, we sat down with Telstra and said, ‘We can’t do this and we expect you to address these issues.’ What we asked for, sought and received from Telstra was a number of commitments. Firstly, and most importantly, that there would be a 1800 number available for people having reception problems to contact and to have a discussion and that this would be advertised. That number is now being advertised nationally.