The federal Minister for Information Technology and Communications, Senator Richard Alston, told the Australia-Korea broadband summit on the Gold Coast today he had issued a direction to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to undertake in-depth reporting on broadband take-up and availability within the nation's business community.
Senator Alston said in a statement "the ACCC will be required to monitor and report on the availability and take-up of retail and wholesale broadband services, on a sector-by-sector and geographic basis and classified by sector, technology type and transmission speed (low, medium and high bandwidth).
"The ACCC will provide its first report under the new arrangements in November 2003".
The move comes in response to a recommendation from the Broadband Advisory Group, whose report the federal government released in January, that the government require the capture of statistics measuring effective broadband use rather than just takeup.
Senator Alston said "the new ACCC figures will enable more informed commercial decisions to be made in the areas of health, education and e-government sectors".
