Respected ACMA senior executive Giles Tanner is set to retire next week

After almost 30 years, the ACMA’s General Manager, Communications Infrastructure Division, Giles Tanner, will retire at the end of November.

 
At a recent Senate Estimates, ACMA Chair, Nerida O’Loughlin said “I believe it is fair to say that, in (Giles) time at the ACMA, he has become the pre-eminent advisor to industry and government on spectrum, licensing and telecommunications infrastructure matters.”
 
Giles has been heavily involved in the radio industry since the early 1990’s, first as director of the Australian Broadcasting Authority’s planning team where he helped set in train the ACMA’s licence area planning process which saw vacant FM frequencies in the most populated areas of the country put to work.
 
As the ABA’s general manager (1997-2005), he led teams that, among other things, auctioned around $400m worth of broadcasting licences, mostly for FM radio.
 
Over this time, the ABA allocated an additional two commercial radio licences in most major markets, as well as large numbers of licences for national, community and niche radio, as well as overseeing the issue, to incumbents, of a single commercial FM radio licence in some 56 small commercial radio markets.
 
Giles was also part of the ABA’s Cash for Comment inquiry into the direct commercial relationships between talkback radio personalities and their advertisers and sponsors.
 
When the ACMA was formed in 2005 as a merger of the Australian Broadcasting Authority and the Australian Communications Authority, Giles focussed more on the spectrum planning side of the new regulator’s remit.
 
While his primary broadcasting-related focus over that time was on television, including the ‘digital dividend,’ this period also saw the initial roll-out of DAB+ in Australia’s major metropolitan areas.
 
 Giles was awarded the Public Service Medal in 2015 for “outstanding public service in enabling generational change in radiofrequency spectrum management and use, known as the Digital Dividend, and longstanding contribution to broadcasting and spectrum regulation.”

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