Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)
Licenses and regulates carriers, manages radiocommunications spectrum, and would administer compliance with a universal outdoor mobile coverage obligation.
Responsibilities
- Licence carriers and manage radiocommunications spectrum
- Enforce telecommunications consumer safeguards
- Administer universal service arrangements
The regulator that would have to make a coverage obligation mean something.
ACMA advised on the radiocommunications spectrum questions underlying the Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation, alongside the low earth orbit satellite working group whose technology makes near-universal outdoor coverage feasible at all.
An obligation is only as real as its measurement. "Reasonable and equitable access to baseline outdoor mobile coverage" has to be converted into something testable — where, at what signal strength, measured how, and with what consequence for failure. That definitional work is the whole of whether the obligation delivers, and it is why the National Farmers' Federation issued a statement of expectations in August 2025 and why sector commentary described the draft legislation as falling short.
This database has made the same observation about discretionary planning pathways and cross-sector screening: the instrument is settled long before the definitions are, and the definitions are where the policy actually lives.
Where this body appears in a process
Every point at which Australian Communications and Media Authority can hold something up, and why.
| Process | Step | Why it waits | Clock | Typical |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile coverage reaches a place the market will not serve | Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation commences decision | statutory | — | 365 |