ACCC commences review to vary DTCS service description

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has commenced a public inquiry into a variation of the service description for the domestic transmission capacity service.

The DTCS is a generic service for the carriage of voice, data or other communications using wideband or broadband carriage.  The DTCS declaration covers all transmission routes except those excluded by the ACCC due to the existence of effective competition.

The DTCS declaration is intended to cover all transmission interface protocols commonly used over the Australian network.  The ACCC is conducting the present inquiry to clarify the scope of the DTCS service description in the current declaration.

The ACCC today issued a discussion paper seeking submissions on whether the DTCS service description should specifically include Ethernet interface protocols. Ethernet interface protocols are currently widely used in the Australian telecommunications network and are likely to be common in future roll outs and upgrades

To assist its decision, the ACCC invites submissions on its discussion paper from stakeholders and interested parties by no later than 5 p.m. on 31 December 2009. The discussion paper will be available on the ACCC's website.