Telstra has called for an independent telecommunications adjudicator with the power to make binding price and access decisions, but also wants an independent evaluation of its copper network settled before regulatory reform proceeds.
Telstra has called for an "independent" part-Telstra-funded telecommunications adjudicator with the power to make binding price and access decisions.
The government has no choice but to prescribe the strongest reform medicine for Telstra, based on separating its wholesale and retail businesses once and for all.
The adjudicator, appointed by the government but funded by the government and Telstra, would exist to resolve pricing and access disputes. Telstra said it did not support giving the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) the power to make binding decisions because it believed it would likely result in dragging out dispute resolutions due to the need for the commission to undertake due process.
The ACCC would still play a role in the framework envisioned by Telstra, which was allowed to provide "non-binding guidance" on alleged illegal contact and also to act as a pricing safety net. Telstra would be required to provide the ACCC with "price equivalence notifications" within two days of any price changes it intended to make.
The ACCC meanwhile has said in its submission that the only way to ensure equivalence in access before the NBN is Telstra's structural separation, and that current operational separation arrangements would not facilitate competition in the transition period. Yesterday at Informa's Broadband Australia conference, ACCC commissioner Ed Willett said that the current operational separation regime was "next to useless".
Telstra's main rival Optus also called for Telstra's immediate structural separation in its submission. However, Telstra said the adjudicator proposal would be a "practical, fast track" way to ensure price and access equivalence until the NBN itself would ultimately deliver structural separation.
The Competitive Carrier's Coalition (CCC), which represents a number of ISPs, has called Telstra's response arrogant and out of touch. "The government has no choice but to prescribe the strongest reform medicine for Telstra, based on separating its wholesale and retail businesses once and for all," David Forman, CCC executive director, said in a statement today.
Telstra also said in its submission that it wanted the NBN, upon completion, to bear the burden of the government's Universal Service Obligation. "The NBN should assume the vast majority of the costs of meeting the USO in uneconomic areas," it said.
"If the responsibility for being the infrastructure provider of last resort transitions to the NBN, then Telstra recognises the need to increase the USO levy falls away. Instead it would make sense to maintain the current industry funding regime during the transition period," said Telstra.
