Under Part XIC of the Trade Practices Act 1974, Chime Communications Pty Limited and iiNet Limited (collectively Chime) have notified the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission of three access disputes with Telstra Corporation Limited.
The first access dispute relates to various price and non-price terms of supply of the Unconditioned Local Loop Service* from Telstra to Chime.
The second access dispute relates to various price and non-price terms of supply of the Line Sharing Service* from Telstra to Chime.
The third access dispute relates to the connection and annual charges for the supply of the Domestic Transmission Capacity Service* from Telstra to Chime.
The ACCC has commenced the arbitration process for this access dispute. Given that the legislation contemplates that arbitrations be conducted in private, the ACCC will not be making any public comment at this stage.
*The Unconditioned Local Loop service involves the use of unconditioned cable, primarily copper pairs, between end users and a telephone exchange where the unconditioned cable terminates. The declared ULLS is being used by access seekers to support and connect to their own infrastructure for the supply of new and innovative voice and data services, such as those involving voice over IP and DSL technologies.
The Line Sharing Service involves an access provider providing a voiceband PSTN service to an end-user, whilst providing access to another carrier (the access seeker) to simultaneously provide services to the same end-user over the high-frequency portion of the unconditioned local loop.
The Domestic Transmission Capacity Service is a generic service that can be used for the carriage of voice, data or other communications using wideband or broadband carriage (the minimum bandwidth in the current declaration is 2 Mbps). Carriers/CSPs can use transmission capacity to set up their own networks for aggregated voice or data channels, or for integrated data traffic (such as voice, video, and data).