# ACMA — Australian Communications and Media Authority

> Australia's Commonwealth regulator for telecommunications, radiocommunications, broadcasting
> and online content. ACMA operates two real programmatic surfaces, both attached to statutory
> registers: the **Spectrum Licensing API**, a completely public and anonymous REST+SOAP service
> over the Register of Radiocommunications Licences, and the **Do Not Call Register Real Time
> Access washing service**, a paid SOAP channel telemarketers must use before calling Australian
> numbers. ACMA publishes no OpenAPI; the OpenAPI below is an API Evangelist reconstruction from
> ACMA's own published guide, its live WSDL and live-verified responses.
>
> No API key. No account. No OAuth. The Spectrum Licensing API answers anonymous requests.
> Generated by the API Evangelist enrichment pipeline, 2026-07-25.

## APIs

- [ACMA Spectrum Licensing API](https://www.acma.gov.au/radiocomms-licence-data): 22 read-only
  operations (11 web methods × XML and JSON projections) over licences, licensees, transmitter
  sites, device registrations, frequency assignments, antennas, access areas and the 400 MHz band
  register. Base URL
  `https://api.acma.gov.au/SpectrumLicensingAPIOuterService/OuterService.svc`. No authentication.
  Capped at 2,000 records per query.
- [Do Not Call Register Real Time Access (RTA) washing service](https://www.donotcall.gov.au/industry/washing-process-overview/soap):
  SOAP service with three operations — GetAccountBalance, WashNumbers, GetWashResult. Endpoint
  `https://www.donotcall.gov.au/dncrtelem/rtw/washing.cfc`. Requires an industry account and a
  paid subscription of type D or above; metered in wash credits.

## Specs

- [OpenAPI 3.1 — Spectrum Licensing (reconstructed)](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/openapi/acma-spectrum-licensing-openapi.yml)
- [WSDL — Spectrum Licensing (live, verbatim)](https://api.acma.gov.au/SpectrumLicensingAPIOuterService/OuterService.svc?wsdl)
- [WSDL — Do Not Call Register RTA (live, verbatim)](https://www.donotcall.gov.au/dncrtelem/rtw/washing.cfc?wsdl)
- [XML Schemas — Spectrum Licensing](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/wsdl/acma-spectrum-licensing-xsd0.xsd)
- [OpenAPI Overlay — API Evangelist annotations](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/overlays/acma-spectrum-licensing-overlay.yaml)

## Docs

- [Spectrum Licensing API guide (DOCX, v1.0, 17 June 2016)](https://www.acma.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-11/Spectrum%20licensing%20API.docx)
- [Radiocomms licence data — terms, download and API access](https://www.acma.gov.au/radiocomms-licence-data)
- [Register of Radiocommunications Licences (RRL)](https://www.acma.gov.au/register-radiocommunication-licences-rrl)
- [Offline RRL browser tool](https://web.acma.gov.au/offline-rrl/)
- [Do Not Call Register — washing process overview](https://www.donotcall.gov.au/industry/washing-process-overview)
- [Do Not Call Register — SOAP fact sheet (PDF)](https://www.donotcall.gov.au/getmedia/9810ca84-d7af-4972-b626-6b5495f52ac2/DNCR-SOAP-Fact-Sheet.pdf)
- [Do Not Call Register — SFTP automated washing service](https://www.donotcall.gov.au/industry/washing-process-overview/sftp)
- [Do Not Call Register — subscriptions and fees](https://www.donotcall.gov.au/industry/subscription-overview)
- [ACMA vulnerability disclosure policy](https://www.acma.gov.au/vulnerability-disclosure-policy)
- [ACMA developer portal (Azure API Management — sign-in required, nothing visible anonymously)](https://developer.acma.gov.au/)
- [ACMA datasets on data.gov.au](https://data.gov.au/data/organization/australiancommunicationsandmediaauthority)

## Artifacts

- [Authentication profile](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/authentication/acma-authentication.yml)
- [API conventions](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/conventions/acma-conventions.yml)
- [Error behaviour (Spectrum Licensing)](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/errors/acma-problem-types.yml)
- [System codes (Do Not Call Register RTA)](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/errors/acma-dncr-system-codes.yml)
- [Rate limits and payload ceilings](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/rate-limits/acma-rate-limits.yml)
- [Plans and wash-credit subscriptions](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/plans/acma-plans.yml)
- [Lifecycle, versioning and withdrawn operations](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/lifecycle/acma-lifecycle.yml)
- [Data model / entity graph](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/data-model/acma-data-model.yml)
- [Standards conformance](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/conformance/acma-conformance.yml)
- [MCP server (candidate)](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/mcp/acma-mcp.yml)
- [MCP tool crosswalk](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/mcp/acma-tool-crosswalk.yml)
- [Agent skills index](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/skills/_index.yml)
- [Agentic access contracts](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/agentic-access/acma-agentic-access.yml)
- [Domain security probe](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/security/acma-domain-security.yml)
- [Vulnerability disclosure](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/acma/refs/heads/main/security/acma-vulnerability-disclosure.yml)
- [Live response examples](https://github.com/api-evangelist/acma/tree/main/examples)
- [Arazzo workflows](https://github.com/api-evangelist/acma/tree/main/arazzo)

## Using these APIs correctly

- The Spectrum Licensing API is anonymous, read-only and GET-only. There are no writes anywhere
  in ACMA's public surface.
- Every query is capped at 2,000 records and truncation is SILENT. Read `TOTAL_RESULT` from any
  record and page with `offset`/`strOffset`. For whole-dataset work, take the daily zip extract
  instead — that is what the cap exists to push you toward.
- Format is chosen by the operation name suffix (`…XML` / `…JSON`), not by an Accept header.
  JSON is served as `application/octet-stream`.
- No matches is HTTP 200 with an empty array, not 404. Errors are HTML fault pages with no
  machine-readable body.
- Frequency units differ by operation (Hz on registrations and assignments, MHz on the 400 MHz
  register); request dates are DD-MM-YYYY while response dates are ISO local datetimes.
- Licence records contain personal information. ACMA's licence terms forbid using it for
  unsolicited telemarketing, spam or mail advertising, and forbid redistributing a natural
  person's details in a derivative. Attribute output as "Based on Australian Communications and
  Media Authority information".
- Washing numbers costs money. Every number submitted — including invalid ones — consumes a wash
  credit, so validate before you submit, and recover a timed-out wash with `GetWashResult` and
  the original `ClientReferenceId` rather than resubmitting.

## Not available

- No OpenAPI, Swagger or AsyncAPI published by ACMA on any host.
- No GraphQL, no gRPC, no webhooks and no event surface of any kind.
- No SDKs, no CLI, no Postman collection, and no ACMA GitHub organisation. Generate a client
  from the WSDL instead.
- No `/.well-known/` documents anywhere — including no security.txt, despite a real published
  vulnerability disclosure policy.
- No status page, no SLA, no dated API changelog, no deprecation policy.
- No OAuth, OpenID Connect, API keys or scopes.
- No CAMARA or GSMA Open Gateway posture — ACMA regulates the operators that expose those APIs;
  it does not expose them.