Summary

  • The ACCC’s 2026–27 inquiry is considering whether to declare domestic mobile roaming and a radio access network service; it has not decided to declare either.
  • Roaming concerns a subscriber using another provider’s network. A RAN service concerns one provider gaining access to infrastructure such as towers and radio equipment. Co-location, MOCN access and MVNO wholesale are separate arrangements.

Australia’s mobile-sharing debate is often compressed into one question: should networks be opened up? The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has put a more precise question on the table. Its 2026–27 inquiry is examining whether to declare two services, domestic mobile roaming and a radio access network (RAN) service. The regulator says it has not formed a view on whether either should be declared. The inquiry is expected to take about 12 months and includes a discussion paper, submissions, draft findings and a final report.

The two possible services address different control points. Domestic roaming is a retail-facing arrangement: a customer of one mobile provider may use another provider’s network outside the first provider’s own coverage area. A RAN service is a wholesale relationship between providers, potentially allowing one operator to use infrastructure such as towers and radio equipment while continuing to manage its own customers and services. Those descriptions do not settle the precise service definitions or technical terms that a future declaration might contain. They do show why the proposals should not be treated as synonyms.

A roaming right changes where a subscriber’s existing service can be carried. It does not, by itself, construct a new mast or prove that the host network can serve every device, plan or location in the same way. A RAN access right would address an operator’s use of infrastructure. It would not automatically grant access to every network layer, spectrum arrangement, site, or customer-facing service.

The conditions would matter: which facilities are included, who controls radio resources, which users are eligible, and what happens when capacity is constrained are all questions for a service definition and access terms, not facts established by the inquiry’s title.

The ACCC’s 2026 Mobile Infrastructure Report offers a useful warning against treating “access” as a simple count. Based on operator data to 31 January 2026, it recorded 5,262 TPG-owned sites and 7,811 sites TPG could access through its own network plus the Optus–TPG multi-operator core network (MOCN) arrangement. The latter figure included 2,549 MOCN sites. It is an access footprint, not a count of sites owned by TPG, and does not establish identical service for every customer in every place.

The distinction is sharper in remote Australia: the report counted 16 TPG sites and 356 MOCN sites accessible to TPG in remote areas. It reported no TPG sites in very remote areas, where TPG relied on MOCN sites. These figures describe infrastructure relationships in the report’s categories. They do not, alone, tell a user whether a particular handset, plan and location can make a call or sustain a data session.

Nor is co-location a proxy for either proposed service. The report said 34.1% of Telstra’s active sites, 66.2% of Optus’s and 92.2% of TPG’s were co-located. Co-location means providers have equipment at the same site; it does not say that one has a wholesale right to operate another’s radio equipment, use its spectrum, serve its customers, or rely on its core network. Physical proximity can coexist with distinct control and commercial arrangements.

The same separation applies to mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) wholesale. The ACCC’s report said Optus supplied access to 27 MVNOs, Telstra to 22 and TPG to three. None offered MVNOs 5G Standalone access; the reported 5G access was Non-Standalone. That is evidence about existing wholesale offers, not a description of a declared RAN service or domestic roaming. The labels may appear together in a debate about sharing, but the relevant rights and service boundaries differ.

The ACCC has also cautioned against over-reading coverage data. It discontinued its mobile-coverage analysis in the 2024 report after identifying challenges with model transparency and map comparability. Its 2026 infrastructure report focuses on sites. Site totals can illuminate where infrastructure is reported and how arrangements shape an operator’s access footprint; they are not measurements of population coverage, geographic reach, speed, reliability or service at a user’s exact location.

The 2017 domestic roaming inquiry is relevant history, but not a forecast of today’s decision. The ACCC then declined to declare roaming, finding that it was not satisfied a declaration would promote the long-term interests of end users, including in light of competition and investment incentives. The current inquiry has a wider frame: it considers a RAN service alongside roaming and takes account of newer developments, including satellite direct-to-device services and the proposed Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation. The earlier reasoning identifies questions to revisit; it does not answer them for a different inquiry and market record.

The proposed UOMO is itself a different instrument. The bill’s parliamentary record showed it before the Senate after the House’s third reading on 9 September 2026. It was not yet an Act at the evidence cutoff. The proposal concerns a baseline for outdoor voice and SMS that is reasonably available on an equitable basis, subject to the bill’s terms and timing. The ACCC inquiry instead asks whether specified wholesale mobile services should be declared. A service obligation and a wholesale access remedy have different subjects, triggers and measures. One does not automatically create the other.

The immediate analytical task is therefore definitional. What exactly would a declared service let a provider do? Which network components and customer groups would it cover? How would access requests, capacity, service quality, investment, commercial negotiation and regulated terms be handled? The ACCC has said that declaration can require access on request and allow it to determine regulated terms if commercial agreement cannot be reached. That power makes the boundary of the service consequential. It does not predetermine that declaration is justified or what terms would be appropriate.

Until the inquiry publishes its findings, the measured facts are the existing network arrangements and dated site data; the remedies remain open questions. Keeping that distinction intact avoids two errors: treating an access footprint as a coverage promise, and treating every form of network sharing as the same right.

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