Consumer Data Right telecommunications sectoral assessment

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The Consumer Data Right, also known as the CDR, is a new law designed to give consumers greater access and control of their own data and more readily compare and switch between products and services, which encourages competition between services providers.

The CDR allows consumers to direct their data to be shared from their existing service provider through a secure online system with a new provider of their choice. To receive CDR data, data recipients need to become accredited.

The CDR regime was rolled out in the banking sector first in July 2020 and is currently being rolled out in the energy sector. Treasury hopes to have rolled out the CDR to the telecommunications sector by the end of 2021. Eventually, CDR will apply to numerous sectors in the Australian economy. What constitutes ‘CDR data’ will be different for each particular sector and will be set out in the designation instrument for each sector.

In the Federal Budget 2021-22, Treasury announced it would be assessing the introduction of the CDR to the telecommunications sector. Treasury asked industry to make submissions in response to the consultation paper to inform the Minister’s decision about whether to designate telecommunications as a CDR sector.

In principle ACCAN is supportive of the introduction of the Consumer Data Right regime across the telecommunications sector to enable consumers to be make more informed choices of telco products and services and encourage market competition between providers and RSPs.

In a submission to Treasury in response to the Consumer Data Right Telecommunications Sectoral Assessment Consultation Paper, ACCAN made several additional recommendations to maximise the benefits of the CDR regime for consumers:

  1. Consumers must be able to access their data for free to be shared between service providers and with accredited data recipients of their choice within the CDR regime.
  2. All appropriate data sets must be identified for inclusion in the regime to maximise consumer, competition, and innovation benefits.
  3. The protection and safety of consumer data must be ensured for the regime to be confidently adopted by consumers.

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