The Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2006 was introduced into Federal Parliament. This Bill will improve privacy protection for telephone subscriber information stored in the IPND and will implement a situation substantially similar to that advocated in EFA’s July 2005 submission to the ACMA concerning data sourced from the IPND. Unfortunately however the Government has not addressed the related issue of Sensis’s collection of data directly from telephone service providers, not the IPND. Hence the Bill will not result in adequate regulation, nor result in a level playing field applicable to public directory producers. EFA considers Sensis should be required to comply with the same rules as any other public directory producer.
