Interim determinations in telecommunications access disputes
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today published interim determinations in two telecommunications access disputes regarding the supply of the local call resale services and wholesale line rental from Telstra Corporation Ltd to Optus Networks Pty Limited.
The ACCC has published the interim determinations and accompanying statements of reasons to encourage reasonable local call resale and wholesale line rental prices to apply across the market.
Consistent with the pricing principles and indicative prices for local call resale and wholesale line rental, the interim determinations provide that the charges payable by Optus to Telstra for the period up to 31 December 2007 are:
local call resale: 17.92c per call
wholesale line rental: indicative prices of $23.12 for HomeLine Part and $25.84 for BusinessLine Part.
The interim determinations and the accompanying statement of reasons were made on 22 January 2007.
The ACCC is legally obliged to consult with the parties for a period of 14 days regarding publication of these interim determinations and statement of reasons. The ACCC began consultations on 23 January 2007 and considered the submissions of the parties before deciding to publish both interim determinations and their accompanying statements of reasons.
Given that the legislation contemplates that arbitrations be otherwise conducted in private, the ACCC will not be making any further public comment at this stage.
The ACCC will now progress a final determination in this matter, which will take into account a broader and more complex range of issues than is required for an interim determination.
The ACCC is also currently considering the potential implications of these regulatory changes for the continuing operation of the Competition Notice issued on 12 April 2006 regarding Telstra's line rental pricing and is seeking the views of interested parties on these issues until 19 February 2007.
* Local call resale (the local carriage service (LCS)) is a service for the carriage of telephone calls from customer equipment at an end-user’s premises to separately located customer equipment of an end-user in the same standard zone. However, the local carriage service does not include services where the supply of the local carriage service originates from an exchange located within a Central Business District Area of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide or Perth and terminates within the standard zone which encompasses the originating exchange. The LCS has been declared since 1999 and was last declared on 1 August 2006.
** The wholesale line rental (WLR) is an access service which allows an end-user to connect to a carrier or carriage service provider’s public switched telephone network, and provides the end-user with the ability to make and receive any 3.1khz bandwidth calls (subject to any conditions that might apply to particular types of calls), including, but not limited to, local calls, national and international long distance calls and a telephone number. The WLR service was declared for the first time in July 2006.
*** Pricing principles and indicative prices, Local carriage service, wholesale line rental and PSTN originating and terminating access services - Final Determination and Explanatory Statement, 29 November 2006.
**** In April 2006 the ACCC issued a Part A competition notice to Telstra under s. 151AKA(2) of the Trade Practices Act 1974. The ACCC issued the notice having reason to believe that Telstra had engaged, and was engaging, in at least one instance of anti-competitive conduct relating to Telstra's pricing of its wholesale local services products.
The ACCC is vested with arbitration powers enabling it to make directions and 'do all things necessary for the speedy hearing and determination of an access dispute'. For the ACCC to engage in arbitration, an access seeker and/or an access provider must notify the ACCC of an access dispute. The ACCC may arbitrate an access dispute only where:
a declared service is supplied or proposed to be supplied by a carrier or carriage service provider
one or more standard access obligations apply or will apply to the carrier or carriage provider in relation to the declared service and
an access seeker is unable to agree with the carrier or carriage service provider regarding the terms and conditions on which the carrier or carriage service provider is to comply with the standard access obligations.
Where a dispute cannot be resolved after private negotiations, mediation and/or conciliation, either of the access parties may refer the matter to the ACCC. Arbitration by the ACCC would be considered as a final solution for the parties in dispute. Where the ACCC is notified of an access dispute the ACCC must determine the matter, unless it decides to terminate the arbitration or the notification is otherwise withdrawn.
