The Communications Alliance has urged the federal government to exercise regulatory restraint if some telecommunications service providers are unable to fully comply with the mandatory two-year data retention regime by the time of the April 2017 deadline.
Communications Alliance (CA) chief executive John Stanton made his call in response to the government’s announcement on Monday of the $128.4 million in grants to industry under the Data Retention Industry Grants Programme (DRIGP).
Internet Australia chief executive Laurie Patton has supported CA’s call for regulatory restraint but repeated previous criticism that it is more than a year since the Act was passed by parliament on the basis that it was urgently required for national security purposes – and “the inordinate delay in the provision of the information has left ISPs to foot the bill for capital equipment without knowing how much funding they might receive”.
“This has caused considerable unnecessary stress to our ISP members. It compounds a litany of issues with this legislation that we have consistently maintained is fundamentally flawed,” Patton complained.
{loadposition peter}John Stanton said the government appeared to have done a reasonable job of apportioning the limited funds available, “particularly among smaller providers, although some of the larger players face heavy unfunded expenses to meet their compliance requirements”.
“But the lengthy delay in finalising the grants process has put many services providers under immense pressure to complete, on time, the work to enable them to comply with this regime.
“The government should acknowledge that these delays have made compliance more difficult to achieve within the prescribed timeframe.
“The attorney-general should publicly commit that no action will be taken, come April next year, against any service provider that is genuinely working to comply with the regime, but has been disadvantaged by the slow pace of decision-making,“ Stanton concluded.
Patton also noted that the $128 million provided by the government is about a third of the full implementation costs estimated by PwC at the Government’s request.
“What’s not covered are the significant operational expenses involved in complying with the scheme. So apart from having to cough up 20% of their upfront costs ISP’s will be out of pocket on an ongoing basis.”
Patton again warned that it was inevitable that the costs imposed on the industry by the government will be passed on to consumers.