6Standard telephone service

#### 6 Standard telephone service (1) A reference in a particular provision of this Act to a standard telephone service is a reference to a carriage service for each of the following purposes: (a) the purpose of voice telephony; (b) if: (i) voice telephony is not practical for a particular end‑user with a disability (for example, because the user is deaf or has a hearing and/or speech impairment); and (ii) another form of communication that is equivalent to voice telephony (for example, communication by means of a device that enables text‑based communication) would be required to be supplied to the end‑user in order to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act 1992; the purpose of that form of communication; (c) a purpose declared by the regulations to be a designated purpose for the purposes of that provision; where: (d) the service passes the connectivity test set out in subsection (2); and (e) to the extent that the service is for the purpose referred to in paragraph (a)—the service has the characteristics (if any) declared by the regulations to be the designated characteristics in relation to that service for the purposes of that provision; and (f) to the extent that the service is for the purpose referred to in paragraph (b)—the service has the characteristics (if any) declared by the regulations to be the designated characteristics in relation to that service for the purposes of that provision; and (g) to the extent that the service is for a particular purpose referred to in paragraph (c)—the service has the characteristics (if any) declared by the regulations to be the designated characteristics in relation to that service for the purposes of that provision. (2) A service passes the connectivity test if an end‑user supplied with the service for a purpose mentioned in paragraph (1)(a), (b) or (c) is ordinarily able to communicate, by means of the service, with each other end‑user who is supplied with the same service for the same purpose, whether or not the end‑users are connected to the same telecommunications network. (3) The following are examples of purposes that could be declared by regulations made for the purposes of paragraph (1)(c): (a) the purpose of the carriage of data; (b) the purpose of tone signalling. (4) In making a recommendation to the Governor‑General at a particular time about the making of regulations for the purposes of paragraph (1)(c), the Minister must have regard to the following matters: (a) whether a carriage service for the purpose proposed to be declared by the regulations can be supplied using the same infrastructure as is, at that time, being used by universal service providers, contractors or grant recipients to supply a standard telephone service for the purpose referred to in paragraph (1)(a); (b) such other matters (if any) as the Minister considers relevant. (5) This section does not prevent a characteristic declared by regulations made for the purposes of paragraph (1)(e), (f) or (g) from being a performance characteristic. (6) In this section: > this Act includes the Telecommunications Act 1997.