The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has published interim determinations, together with the statements of reasons, in two telecommunications arbitrations regarding the supply of the Local Carriage Service* and Wholesale Line Rental Service** from Telstra Corporation Ltd to Chime Communications Pty Ltd.
The ACCC has published the interim determinations and the statements of reasons, to encourage reasonable WLR and LCS prices to apply across the market.
The interim determinations, made in June 2007, provide that the LCS charge payable by Chime to Telstra is to be 17.92 cents per call for the period to 31 December 2007, except where the parties agree otherwise. For the WLR, the charge payable by Chime to Telstra is to be $23.12 per month for Home Line Part and $25.84 per month for Business Line Part for the period to 31 December 2007, except where the parties agree otherwise.
The ACCC consulted with the parties regarding publication of the interim determinations and statements of reasons, as required by the Trade Practices Act 1974. The ACCC has considered the parties' submissions and has decided to publish the interim determinations and statements of reasons.
The ACCC will now progress a final determination in this matter.
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 interim determinations and statements of reasons and the public register of determinations are available from the Published arbitration determinations.
*The 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 LCS does not include services where the supply of the LCS 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 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.