Telephone numbers to be protected

The Telecommunications Amendment (Integrated Public Number Database) Bill 2006 will amend the Telecommunications Act 1997 (Telecommunications Act) to provide additional safeguards to ensure that integrated public number database (IPND) information is only disclosed and used for the purposes specified in Part 13 of the Telecommunications Act.

The IPND is an industry-wide database of all residential and business phone numbers (both listed and unlisted) and associated customer information, including name and address information. The IPND was established and is maintained by Telstra as a condition of its carrier licence.

The insertion of a definition of public number directory into the Telecommunications Act is intended to prevent IPND information being used directly to produce records or databases which are used for such purposes as marketing, data cleansing and appending, debt collection, identity verification and credit checking and to limit the extent to which records which are public number directories (within the meaning of the definition in the Bill) are readily able to be used for such purposes.

Comment: The Australian