The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today issued its submission to the Productivity Commission review of the telecommunications-specific competition regulation.
The Productivity Commission is required to report to the Treasurer and the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts by June 2001 on the telecommunications-specific competition regulation contained in Parts XIB and XIC of the Trade Practices Act 1974 and certain parts of the Telecommunications Act 1997. Those provisions have been administered by the ACCC since their introduction in July 1997.
The ACCC's submission reviews the three-year operation of the regime and concludes that it has clearly encouraged the development of competition in markets where this would otherwise not have occurred, or occurred only very slowly. Consumers have benefited from the resulting lower prices and improved range of services.
The main elements of the regime are a telecommunications access regime and telecommunications-specific anti-competitive conduct provisions. The regime is consistent with general competition law and policy in Australia, and is similar to many telecommunications-specific regulatory arrangements in other countries with recently-liberalised telecommunications markets.
The submission points out that the telecommunications market in Australia remains a market in transition, dominated by a single, highly vertically-integrated incumbent. The ACCC regards the current regime as sufficiently robust and flexible to accommodate the rapidly changing conditions in the Australian telecommunications and related markets, while allowing scope for withdrawal from regulation when and to the extent appropriate. The ACCC recommends the retention of the regime.
However, it points out a number of operational difficulties in the current arrangements, which limit the speed and effectiveness of some aspects of the regulatory process. The ACCC submission includes a number of suggestions for improvement.
One of these would include provision, in certain limited circumstances, for the ACCC to require and/or amend undertakings from access providers concerning the terms and conditions of access to declared services. This would overcome a number of problems currently affecting the process by which such terms and conditions are currently determined. Another would enable the regulator to prescribe standards of conduct having regard to competition and public interest criteria, so producing better and faster outcomes in certain cases of anti-competitive conduct.
The ACCC believes that, with such improvement, the telecommunications-specific competition regulation should continue to underpin efficient growth and expansion in telecommunications infrastructure and services, and ensure continuing benefits for consumers.