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