Australia - Analyses Telecoms Market - mid 2013

Synopsis

The Australian telecoms market currently operates in a two-tiered fashion. By far the greatest attention of politicians and the media is focused on the national broadband market. After five years of political fighting the NBN policy from the Coalition is now very close to the policy that supports the network that is currently being rolled out. There are very large parts that now have bipartisan support. Few politicians will actually admit this, but the future existence of the NBN is safe.

The real market action in 2013 is taking place in the mobile broadband market. The spectrum auctions have seen Telstra as the clear winner and it is set to dominate the 4G LTE market. This will have serious consequences for the other players in the market, especially Optus, whose future depends on mobile. It won’t be too long before we start seeing monopolistic tendencies in this market.

In the meantime, in many sectors the NBN is no longer the story. Instead it has created other, new stories in the various sections of our society and our economy, many of which are highlighted in this report.