173Declarations

##### 173 Declarations It is the Parliament’s intention: (a) that the carriers, as the primary providers of Australia’s public telecommunications infrastructure and networks, and the principal suppliers of telecommunications services in Australia, should be able to exploit fully, in their supply of basic carriage services, the economies of scale and scope available to them because of the facilities they control; and (b) that the use of telecommunications services supplied by carriers to other persons (including use for or in relation to the supply of telecommunications services by those persons) should be free of restrictions other than those that AUSTEL imposes under Part 10 by including conditions in class licences; and (c) that, in relation to the supply of higher level services, there should be competition, on an equitable basis, among suppliers of such services (whether carriers or other persons); and (d) that, in order to promote competition in markets for telecommunications services, in a way that is orderly and consistent with the declaration in paragraph (a), AUSTEL should be empowered to require a carrier to unbundle basic carriage services progressively; and (e) that, in order to promote competition, and to reduce information-gathering costs to consumers of telecommunications services, the carriers should be required to prepare tariffs of the basic carriage services they supply; and (f) that a carrier that is in a position to dominate a market for telecommunications services should not abuse its market power by discriminating between persons who acquire such services in that market; and (g) that, in view of the declaration in paragraph (b), a carrier should not, in its supply of telecommunications services in a market, discriminate between resellers who acquire such services in that market and other persons who so acquire such services.