Cheaper phone calls but mobile wireless up PHONE calls are getting cheaper but wireless internet prices rose for the first time over the past financial year, the competition watchdog says. Despite the hike, overall telecommunications costs are continuing to drop, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said in two reports on the sector's 2011/12 performance tabled on Tuesday. And prices are nearly 20 per cent lower than five years ago, the ACCC says. With inflation taken into account, consumers paid 2.2 per cent less for telco services in 2011/12. Notably, ACCC chairman Rod Sims says competition is likely to be behind a more-than-10 per cent real price fall for fixed line to mobile calls. "Significant falls in these prices over the last five years are likely to be due to increased competition and ACCC reductions in the regulated wholesale price for mobile call termination," Mr Sims said in a statement. Call minutes from mobile phones in 2011/12 exceeded those from fixed lines for the first time. Another first was the rise in real prices for wireless internet services, up 1.7 per cent over the prior year. This could reflect the challenge of increased traffic and the emerging risks of congested networks, the watchdog said. Mr Sims said total data downloaded in 2011/12 increased by 51 per cent. He said telco networks, like roads, became congested at times. "Service providers will either need to invest in more capacity, adjusting pricing or encourage their customers to shift their usage to less busy times to manage growing demands into the future," Mr Sims said. The national broadband network (NBN) would be the main factor in increasing capacity, the ACCC said. But other carriers would need to boost their funding to lift transmission capabilities. Downloading data from a fixed-line connection increased one percentage point to 94 per cent of all downloads in 2011/12. Complaints to the ACCC about the industry increased by seven per cent to 4350 compared with the previous year, with the watchdog referring around 34 per cent of those to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO).