The ACCC has announced that it is investigating whether nine wholesale telecommunications services that support broadband, voice, and data transmission services should continue to be regulated in the country.
This investigation doesn’t include services subject to the NBN’s Special Access Undertaking or Superfast Broadband Access Services on fixed networks that aren’t the NBN, but instead include specific components of Australian telecommunications networks.
As the ACCC states, telecommunications services operating within Australia can do so without regulation, but if the service is ‘declared’, then the supplier must allow for providers to access it upon request. If a service is declared, then the ACCC can set specific terms for the service, including prices, non-price terms, access conditions and maximum price points.
So what’s the ACCC actually looking into? Well, they don’t exactly have consumer-facing names, but they include the:
- Domestic transmission capacity service
- Unconditioned local loop service
- Line sharing service
- Wholesale line rental
- Local carriage service
- Fixed originating access service
- Fixed terminating access service
- Wholesale asymmetric digital subscriber line
- Domestic mobile terminating access service.
The systems listed above underpin much of Australia’s telecommunications networks, with each service filling a different role. Broadly speaking, the combination of these services allows customers to use Telstra’s legacy access network, network interconnections for voice calls, analogue fixed-line phone services, data transmission, and ADSL.
By the end of the inquiry, the declaration for each of the above services will be considered, whether they should be extended, varied, revoked, allowed to expire, or if a new declaration should be made.
“Our inquiry will consider whether ongoing regulation of these declared services promotes the long-term interests of Australians,” ACCC commissioner Anna Brakey said.
“We want to know if recent developments including investments in optical fibre, the completion of the NBN, and declining usage of Telstra’s copper network mean that competition is protecting customers and what that means about whether or how we should regulate these services.”
The ACCC will also investigate the relevancy of newer technologies, such as instant messaging over the internet and video conferencing applications, and what regulation might look like for these services.
The ACCC is seeking submissions from interested parties for its discussion paper, with a deadline of July 12, 2023. A final report will be released in early 2024. It’s not the most fun telco news, but it’s pretty important.