ACCC issues transmission cost model discussion paper
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today issued a discussion paper seeking industry comment on a telecommunications transmission cost model developed by an independent expert consultant.
This model has been configured to estimate the costs of supplying transmission services between various capital–regional locations in Australia.
This model will assist the ACCC’s regulatory work, including informing its analysis of the likely costs of supplying transmission services in different regions of Australia, which are a critical input to the supply of broadband services to end-users. The ACCC also expects that the transmission cost model will assist commercial negotiations with respect to this service.
The transmission cost model (and accompanying discussion paper and user manual) which has been developed by Gibson Quai-AAS, is available on the ACCC's website at www.accc.gov.au.
At this stage, the transmission cost model does not seek to estimate the costs of supplying transmission services between specific capital–regional locations. As part of the consultation process commencing today, the ACCC is first seeking industry comment whether the structure of the model reflects industry best practice, as well as feedback on various empirical issues. For this reason, the inputs which appear in the model are of an indicative nature only.
The ACCC invites interested parties to provide written submissions by 23 May 2007
Submissions can be addressed to Ms Nicole Hardy/Mr John Bahtsevanoglou, Communications Group, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, GPO Box 520, Melbourne, Victoria, 3001. In addition to a hard copy, parties making submissions are encouraged to provide an electronic copy of the submission to nicole.hardy@accc.gov.au or john.bahtsevanoglou@accc.gov.au.
Under Part XIC of the Trade Practices Act 1974, the ACCC may 'declare' services where it determines that this would be in the long-term interests of end-users. Once a service is declared, carriage services providers are required to comply with standard access obligations in the supply of this service. This includes that CSPs are required to allow service providers to provide carriage and/or content services to end-users.
The Domestic Transmission Capacity Service was originally deemed declared on 30 June 1997. Since that time, the ACCC has conducted public inquiries in 1998, 2001 and 2004 to review this declaration.
In April 2004, the ACCC re-declared the Domestic Transmission Service for a period of five years. The current scope of declaration includes 'inter-capital' transmission, 'inter-exchange transmission', 'other' transmission and 'tail-end transmission' (these are defined in the discussion paper issued today). However, the scope of the declaration was revised. It excludes transmission capacity:
between the main capital cities (i.e. inter-capital transmission between Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney), and
on 14 nominated capital-regional routes.
Under Part XIC of the Act, in the event that parties are unable to reach commercial agreement regarding the terms and conditions of access to declared services, the ACCC is required to arbitrate these disputes.
The ACCC is currently administering two access disputes in relation to the transmission service.
