At present, Telstra alone has some 8.6million customers who make around 25 million calls a day. By far the most important development has been the growth of mobile telephone services, introduced in Sydney and Melbourne around 1987. Information on the size of the problem of theft of telecommunications industry is scant, particularly in Australia. In the US it is estimated that mobile telephone fraud costs the industry over a million dollars a day. Types of crimes range from theft of mobile phones and false subscriptions to complicated computer fraud.
Policy makers face a number of choices in deciding how best to approach the problem.
One is to take legislative and administrative action. This may however result in the over-codifying of behaviour, enacting new laws every time a new type of criminal behaviour arises. There is already a wide array of State and Commonwealth offences which govern the use of telecommunications systems. If they are rigorously interpreted they will encompass most situations in which services are stolen. Where omissions exist, specific laws with limited effect could be enacted.