Overview
- The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has launched a formal inquiry expected to run about a year to decide whether it should require telcos to share towers or allow domestic roaming for other carriers’ customers.
- ACCC commissioner Anna Brakey said the review responds to growing calls to tackle concentrated market power and will only order mandatory sharing if it demonstrably benefits Australians.
- The inquiry follows major outages that harmed public safety and services, including a July Telstra failure that disrupted calls, data, EFTPOS and V/Line train radios and a September 2025 Optus outage that left triple zero unreachable for hours and is linked to deaths.
- The watchdog will assess technical options such as radio access network sharing, wholesale roaming and the role of low earth orbit satellite services while holding regional forums to gather local evidence.
- Federal ministers have welcomed the probe and the work will feed into existing policy, including a bill that requires nationwide voice and SMS access by 2027 and ongoing legal actions against providers.