About the Regional Broadband Scheme (RBS)

The Regional Broadband Scheme (RBS) was established to ensure long-term transparent and sustainable funding arrangements are in place in order to provide essential broadband services to regional, rural and remote Australians.

The current reporting period for the RBS is from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024, with reporting due to the ACMA by 31 October 2024.

See the aggregate assessments for the 2020–21, 2021–22 and 2022–23 RBS charges.

Under the scheme, telecommunications carrier licence holders (carriers) are required to pay $8.26294 per month* for each residential or business premises on their network supplied with a designated broadband service over a local access line owned by the carrier or for which the carrier is responsible under a nominated carrier declaration. Carriers with fewer than 2,000 premises for the month are exempt from paying the RBS charge for that month.  

The charge applies to all premises serviced by fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), fibre-to-the-node (FTTN), fibre-to-the-basement (FTTB), fibre-to-the-curb (FTTC) and hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) networks, whether the service is supplied by a carrier, or by another carriage service provider using the carrier’s network.

In the first 5 years of the scheme, an individual carrier (or if within a group, the carrier nominated as the ‘controller’) may have access to concessions to reduce the total number of chargeable premises associated with a local access line under either:

• the first 55,000 potentially chargeable premises that are recently connected greenfield premises
• the first 25,000 potentially concessional premises that are not recently connected greenfield premises.

* For details on the charge amount, see Calculating the RBS charge.

Under section 100 of the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999, (the TCPSS Act), carriers need to report on the number of premises supplied with a designated broadband service using a local access line owned by the carrier, or for which the carrier is responsible under a nominated carrier declaration.  

The designated broadband service may be provided by the carrier or another carriage service provider using the carrier’s local access lines.

Each eligible year, for the first 5 years of the scheme, carriers are required to self-report to the ACMA the monthly number of chargeable premises, and, if applicable, the number of concessions in relation to recently connected greenfield premises or potentially concessional premises. This allows the ACMA to assess the carrier's individual charge liability and collect the charge on behalf of the Commonwealth.

Carriers must also report certain details about their associates in relation to the control of a telecommunications network, a company or a local access line for each month during the eligible financial year.

Each report must set out:

1. the number of chargeable premises a carrier has for each month of the eligible financial year
2. the number of potentially concessional premises a carrier has for each month of the eligible financial year
3. the number of recently connected greenfield premises a carrier has for each month of the eligible financial year
4. information about any associates the carrier had in relation to control of a telecommunications network, a company, or a local access line during a month in the eligible financial year
5. if the carrier was the controller of an associated group, a statement to that effect, details about the members of the associated group and the circumstances that resulted in the person being the controller of the associated group.

The penalty for failing to lodge a report is 50 penalty units per day. Under the Crimes (Amount of Penalty Unit) Instrument 2023, the value of a penalty point is $313, effective from 1 July 2023.

Under the Telecommunications Act 1997 (the Telco Act), a carrier is an entity that holds a telecommunications carrier licence granted by the ACMA. There are a number of conditions which apply to carriers under the Telco Act and the TCPSS Act.

A local access line is a line that is part of the infrastructure of a local access network.  A line does not form part of a local access line to the extent that the line is on the customer side of the boundary of a telecommunications network, unless that line is used to supply a carriage service to a unit in a multi-unit building such as an apartment block or shopping centre.

Carriers may need to get their own advice to determine whether a particular line is part of the infrastructure of a local access network and therefore a local access line. It is not intended that transmission lines would be caught by the definition.

If a carrier owns (or is the nominated carrier in relation to) a local access line at any time during the month (comprising the whole or a part of a month), through which any carriage service provider supplies a designated broadband service to premises for the whole or part of that month, then those premises are chargeable premises of that local access line for that month and may incur the RBS charge.  

Carriers are liable to pay the RBS charge for each chargeable premises on their networks during the whole or a part of each month in an eligible financial year. Chargeable premises are associated with a local access line of a carrier if they are potentially chargeable premises and are not exempt premises for the carrier for the month.

The charge is only applicable to chargeable premises associated with a local access line owned by a carrier or that the carrier is responsible for under a nominated carrier declaration.

The charge does not apply to a premises where a local access line is only being used to supply a service for making voice calls or to view broadcast television streams.

If a person is a carrier and either owns, or is the nominated carrier in relation to, a local access line that is not an exempt line, and a carriage service provider supplies a designated broadband service to a premises in Australia using that line during the whole or part of a month, then the premises is a potentially chargeable premises for that carrier.

Carriers – either by themselves or as part of an associated group – with less than 2,000 potentially chargeable premises during a whole or a part of a month, are exempt from paying the RBS charge for that month. This exemption applies on a month-by-month basis. 

For example, if a carrier had less than 2,000 potentially chargeable premises in January and more than 2,000 potentially chargeable premises in February, only the January services would be exempt from the RBS charge. If the carrier is part of an associated group, note that the exemption applies to the group as a whole, not to individual carriers within that group.

During the first 5 years of the scheme, some carriers will be able to claim a concession for up to 55,000 recently connected greenfield premises per month, or 25,000 potentially concessional premises that are not recently connected greenfield premises.
 

1. Recently connected greenfield premises

As defined under section 96B of the TCPSS Act, a premises is considered a recently connected greenfield premises under 2 circumstances

Recently connected greenfield declaration:

• a declaration made under subsection 63(2) of the Telco Act was in force for that carrier on 30 June 2018
• the declaration required the carrier to connect premises located in a particular development area upon request
• it is a potentially chargeable premises of the carrier
• the premises are within the development area and were connected to the carrier’s network, on or before 30 June 2019.

Eligible local bitstream access service:

• during a period of a month or a part of a month in an eligible financial year, the premises were supplied an eligible local bitstream access service, as well as designated broadband services using a local access line
• the arrangement was captured by an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission service declaration under s152AL(3) of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (for premises supplied between 1 January 2011 and 30 June 2019) and was in place immediately before the start of Schedule 1 of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer) Act 2020.
   

2. Potentially concessional premises 

Carriers that are not entitled to a concession for recently connected greenfield premises may be entitled to a transitional concession under the first 25,000 small business and residential premises connected to their local access lines. If they are part of an associated group, this concession can only be claimed by the controller of the associated group. This concession is also available for the first 5 years of the scheme.    

Each of the premises in a multi-unit building that are supplied with a designated broadband service using a local access line of a carrier will be ‘chargeable premises’ of that carrier. This is the case regardless of whether the designated broadband services are provided by the carrier or by another carriage service provider using the carrier’s local access line.

There may be more than one local access line used to supply services to premises within a multi-unit building. This is because both lead-in cables and lines on the customer side of the telecommunications network may be taken to be local access lines for the purpose of the scheme.

The carrier who owns, or is the nominated carrier in relation to, the local access line nearest to the premises being supplied with the service will be required to report that premises as a ‘chargeable premises associated with a local access line’.

A designated broadband service is a carriage service supplied using a local access line in Australia that enables end-users to download communications and is technically capable of being used to supply a superfast carriage service (a download speed of 25 Mbps or more).

Voice-only telephone services and broadcast television streaming-only services are excluded from the definition.

A nominated carrier is a carrier who has been nominated by the owner of a network unit to be responsible for that network unit in accordance with Division 4 of Part 3 of the Telco Act. The ACMA manages applications for nominated carrier declarations.

A nominated carrier declaration allows a person to supply carriage services to the public using a network unit that is not owned by that carrier.

Local access lines that are transitioning to NBN Co or being decommissioned under certain agreements are excluded from the definition of a potentially chargeable premises. This means that premises supplied with designated broadband services using such local access lines are exempt from the charge. The following local access lines are exempt lines:

• lines that are transitioning to NBN Co from Telstra Corporation Limited under specified agreements
• lines that are the subject of an agreement between NBN Co and specified Optus companies providing for the deactivation or decommissioning of HFC lines
• lines that are transitioning to NBN Co where a contract was in place for their transfer prior to 26 May 2020.

For the purposes of the RBS, carriers must report certain details about their associates in relation to the control of a telecommunications network, a local access line or a company. Section 152 of the Telco Act defines an associate for the purposes of the RBS.

Generally, an associate is an entity that is a partner, or member of the business group of the controller (usually the owner) of the network or local access line. It also includes persons who act in accordance with the directions of the controller, or who are accustomed to act, or who are intended or expected to do so under an agreement with the controller. These are just examples of some circumstances in which a person (whether a company or individual) will be taken to be an associate.

Carriers should carefully consider Part 8 of the Telco Act and seek their own legal advice to ensure they identify and report all relevant associates.

Under subsection 100(7) of the TCPSS Act, if a person is in a position to exercise control of one or more local access lines or a telecommunications network and they have one or more associates, the person is taken to belong to an associated group and is the controller of the associated group.

The controller of the associated group must include in its RBS report a statement that it is the controller of an associated group, identify each member of that associated group, and set out the circumstances that resulted in the person being the controller of the associated group.

Reporting covers a 12-month period from 1 July to 30 June, following the first eligible financial year.

Carriers need to keep track of all potentially chargeable premises, associates, and potentially concessional premises or recently connected greenfield premises for every month of the reporting period.

Carriers with 2,000 or more premises in any month of a reporting period are required to submit a report to the ACMA for each month of a reporting period through the RBS reporting portal.

Reports are due to the ACMA by the 31 October that follows the end of the reporting period.

This decision tree will help you determine what you need to report on.

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RBS decision tree