The Albanese Government has announced that Scyne Advisory will conduct a trial of fixed voice services and consider the performance of Low Earth Orbit Satellites (LEOSats) to inform the Government's work to improve mobile connectivity for more Australians.
Scyne Advisory will independently deliver the fixed voice service trials, with work already underway to progressively set up trial sites across 50 regional and remote locations across Australia.
The trials will track the reliability and quality of voice calls, and test impacts of weather conditions on services.
Data from the trial will also help the Albanese Government to better understand how LEOSat services perform to support voice services across a representative range of regions across Australia, including over the northern Australia wet season. Existing NBN Co fixed wireless and satellite services will also be trialled in parallel to provide a comparison.
Data collected will be independent of industry and be made publicly available next month.
The Government has also today released a summary of feedback received from stakeholders through recent public consultation on modernising delivery and funding of universal telecommunications service arrangements.
Overall, the public consultation process demonstrated there is support for change to universal service arrangements to better reflect evolving consumer needs and the emergence of new alternative technologies.
Stakeholders suggested a more flexible and technology-neutral approach would be preferable, including to adopt modern networks and services that are best suited to each premises, and to future-proof arrangements.
There was also general agreement that simpler funding arrangements would better reflect the market and enable greater efficiency and sustainability.
While the Government is yet to make a decision on how to best modernise the Universal Service Obligation, feedback received from stakeholders is being taken into consideration and will be considered alongside the trial data to help inform next steps.
