What the ACCC does

  • We receive reports from carriers and carriage service providers. Reports are on access agreements and variation agreements for declared services.

What the ACCC can't do

  • We don’t determine the price and non-price terms of access in agreements. These are negotiated between providers and access seekers.

On this page

The providers and services that are covered

Carriers and carriage service providers are covered

Carrier licences and the rules for carriage service providers include a condition that sections 152BEA and 152BEB of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 must be complied with.

This condition includes reporting requirements and covers access agreements and variation agreements. The Competition and Consumer Act 2010 defines these types of agreements in a broad way. They include agreements that:

  • are between an access seeker and a carrier or carriage service provider, and
  • relate to access to a declared service.

If the carrier or carriage service provider fails to comply, enforcement through the Telecommunications Act 1997 may follow. A breach may result in a penalty of up to $10 million for each breach.

Declared services are included

Current declared services are covered through sections 152BEA and 152BEB of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. Services includes the:

  • Domestic Transmission Capacity Service (DTCS)
  • Fixed Originating Access Service (FOAS)
  • Fixed Terminating Access Service (FTAS)
  • Line Sharing Service (LSS)
  • Local Bitstream Access Service (LBAS)
  • Local Carriage Service (LCS)
  • Mobile Terminating Access Service (MTAS)
  • Superfast Broadband Access Service (SBAS)
  • Unconditioned Local Loop Service (ULLS)
  • Wholesale asymmetric digital subscriber line service (WDSL)
  • Wholesale Line Rental (WLR).

The rules also apply to declared services supplied by NBN corporations, such as NBN Co. Services are declared under subsections 152AL(8A), (8D) and (8E) of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.

Where NBN Co publishes a Standard Form of Access Agreement for a service on its website, that service is also considered a declared service. To date, NBN Co has published several Standard Forms of Access Agreement on its website. This includes its Wholesale Broadband Agreement and agreements for satellite services.

Reporting requirements

Quarterly reports

Carriers and carriage service providers must lodge a report every 3 months with the ACCC that sets out:

  • any access agreements and variation agreements for declared services in force during the quarter
  • any access agreements relating to a declared service terminated during the quarter.

Requests by the ACCC

Within 10 days of receiving a written request from the ACCC, a carrier or carriage service provider must provide the ACCC with any access agreement or variation agreement entered into.

This requirement is in section 152BEB of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.

Information to include in reports

Each report must contain the information set out in section 152BEA of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.

Information that must be included for each access agreement or variation agreement is:

  • the parties
  • the service to which the agreement relates
  • the date the agreement was entered into
  • the period of the agreement
  • if the access agreement was terminated, rescinded or cancelled before the expiry of the agreement, the date when this occurred.

How to lodge a report

We have developed a template to help providers meet reporting requirements. Download the ACCC quarterly report about access agreement template ( XLSX 25.58 KB )

Lodge the quarterly report by email to accessagreements@accc.gov.au.

Quarterly reports are due no later than 30 days after the completion of the previous quarter.

Text in lodged documents must be searchable, either in PDF or Microsoft Office format. Contact us if you need to lodge a file larger than 10 MB.

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