Interview with David Havyatt

Telecommunications Journal of Australia, Winter 2005 by Fell, Liz

David Havyatt was appointed in 2000 as Head of Regulatory Affairs, AAPT Limited, which is part of the Telecom New Zealand Group and one of Australia's three major telecommunications carriers. Havyatt has extensive experience with the regulatory, co-regulatory and self-regulatory environment in the communications sector and a keen knowledge of Australian telecommunications history.

In his current position, Havyatt is responsible for AAPTs relations with government and the range of regulatory and self-regulatory bodies. He is a board member of the Australian Communications Industry Forum (2001-), the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (2001-), and has also sat on the board of the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (2001-2003).

Prior to joining AAPT, Havyatt was Regulatory Manager at the mobile carrier, Hutchison Telecommunications (Australia) Ltd (1998-2000). He joined Hutchison after forming his own consultancy, Havyatt Associates (1996-98), where his clients included UIH and its pay TV subsidiary, Austar, which he represented at the foundation of the now defunct Australian Telecommunications Access Forum (ATAF).

Havyatt's early experience in the telecommunications sector was gained during the 16 years with Telstra/ Telecom Australia (1979-96) where he worked in a range of areas including customer service, sales, regulatory, and planning. Before he left, he held positions in Telstra Corporate & Government as National Manager, Business Development and Operations, and Account Director, Media and Business Development (1993-96).

He holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Sydney, a Master of Arts in Communications Technology and Policy from Macquarie University, and a Graduate Diploma in Economics from the University of New England. He is also a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Freelance journalist, Liz Fell, interviewed Havyatt for the TJA at AAPT's new headquarters in the recently completed Ernst & Young building in Sydney's CBD.

TJA: At a recent SPAN competition summit, chairman John Kranenburg, complimented AAPT for possessing 'regulatory crunch' way beyond its weight. How crucial is it for a carrier/ service provider to devote resources to these regulatory and self-regulatory, indeed, policy matters?

Havyatt: It's critical for a service provider, primarily because, unlike most other industries, we're actually creating the environment in which we operate. Normally when you're doing strategies you can say, 'What is the external environment?' whereas we sit here and say, ' What do we need the external environment to be?'

TJA: So it's a work in progress?

Havyatt: Yes, because we started from this position where we only had one firm and we're still trying to build an industry. That's why it's particularly important. And it's important beyond our own interests because AAPT has this interesting background having grown out of being a customer of telecommunications.

TJA: You said it was important for service providers. Is that because some carriers are not service providers?

Havyatt: Yes, there are some small carriers that don't provide service. I draw that distinction because the legislation draws a distinction between carrier and a carriage service provider and, even though we are both, as are Telstra and Optus, what matters to the public is what we're doing when we are acting as a carriage service provider. If you think of the possible operational separation of Telstra, that's actually about dividing the carrier and service provider pieces.

TJA: The SPAN summit was sponsored by AAPT, which would seem to indicate the priority given to changing the competition environment in the lead-up to Telstra's full privatisation?

Havyatt: We're very concerned about how the industry structure pans out. We think that's the critical issue. As I said at the Summit, we've been very concerned about the excessive focus on facilities-based competition rather than service-based competition in this regime.

TJA: Has anyone estimated the cost of all the work done on communications policy, regulation and self-regulation in Australia?

Havyatt: Yes, but it wasn't a great piece of work in my opinion. Henry Ergas attempted to do it in a submission that he prepared for Telecom New Zealand for the review there in 2000. He included all the costs of the ACA rather than just telco, and he estimated the internal resource. I think he came up with a figure of $100M, which I think was an overestimate. I did my own estimate at the time and came up with $36M. But that is an old estimate - the costs of the regulators have been growing at about 13% a year - far faster than industry growth.

TJA: I assume the cost must be huge because, aside from government-funded regulators, wouldn't the costs for a service provider include lawyers plus the time to write submissions, attend meetings, make Senate appearances, and work on codes with self-regulatory bodies?

Havyatt: It is a huge amount of work, but telecommunications is also a huge industry. Thirty billion dollars is a big industry, and if you look at the regulatory cost as a function of the size of the industry, it's not extraordinarily high, especially given the fact that we are in this process of trying to build an industry. You said the regulators were funded by the government, which is not the case. Both the ACA [Australian Communications Authority] and the ACCC [Australian Competition & Consumer Commission] are funded by the carrier licence fees.