On 18 February 2019, the ACCC commenced a public consultation on a proposal to undertake the collection of competitive supply and pricing data for Dark Fibre and NBN Wholesale Aggregation Services via new record keeping rule.
The information and data collected under the proposed record keeping rule would be used to inform the regulatory processes that fall under Part XIB and Part XIC of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.
On 16 May 2019, the ACCC decided not to implement the proposed record keeping rule. The ACCC will continue to monitor these markets, and will reconsider the issue if competition in the markets diminish.
Timeline
Background
Dark fibre refers to unlit fibre optical cable available for use in the supply of transmission services. Transmission services enable large volumes of aggregated communications traffic (e.g. voice, data, video) to be carried from one point to another. Dark fibre is used by some service providers as an input to the supply of retail voice and broadband services.
NBN wholesale aggregation services involve the supply by a service provider of NBN wholesale access services in conjunction with a service provider’s wholesale transmission services (such as voice, video and internet). NBN aggregation services are used by smaller retail service providers (RSPs) without the scale to make a direct NBN connection to supply retail NBN services to end-users.