What the ACCC does

  • We decide the price and other terms for retail service providers to access the non-NBN fixed line services we regulate.
  • We review the services periodically and decide whether regulation is necessary.

What the ACCC can't do

  • We don’t set the prices or service standards of retail services for end users.
  • We don’t control whether consumers have a choice of retail service providers.

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What we do in regulating fixed line services

We regulate many non-NBN fixed line wholesale services

The ACCC regulates access to wholesale telecommunications services. As part of this role, we regulate:

  • superfast broadband access services (SBAS) supplied by non-NBN networks
  • a range of Telstra legacy fixed line wholesale access services, specifically the:
    • unconditioned local loop service (ULLS)
    • line sharing service (LSS)
    • public switched telephone network originating access (PSTN OA) service
    • public switched telephone network terminating access (PSTN TA) service
    • wholesale line rental (WLR) service
    • local carriage service (LCS)
    • wholesale ADSL service.

We determine the price and non-price terms of access for retail service providers to access these services. We do this to ensure:

  • retail service providers have access to monopoly telecommunications networks
  • consumers can benefit from competition in the market.

We don’t control whether consumers have a choice of retail service providers.

We check that regulating the service remains necessary

The ACCC needs to periodically review the services we regulate.

We do this to check:

  • whether regulation is still necessary
  • that the price and non-price terms of access are suitable.

Our recent reviews of fixed line services are:

We set the rules for the supply of telecommunication services

We describe how we set rules for the supply of telecommunication services:

We run public inquiries on access decisions

We run a public inquiry when we are deciding whether:

  • to declare a service for access regulation
  • to extend, revoke, vary, allow to expire, or remake an existing service declaration before it expires.

See the Telecommunications access declarations we have made. Select ‘Communications’ in the Industry list and ‘Access declaration’ in Type.

After running a public inquiry, we make a final access decision for the service. See the Telecommunications access determinations we have made. Select ‘Communications’ in the Industry list and ‘Access determination’ in Type.

Current legislation doesn’t include dispute provisions

The ACCC no longer manages access disputes. 

Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Act 2010 removed access dispute provisions from the Trade Practices Act 1974 from 1 January 2011.

While changing to the new legislation, the Act allowed a party to notify the ACCC of an access dispute regarding a declared service. This could be done until we made a final access determination.

Arbitration determinations published by the ACCC as part of these provisions are in the public register.

The legal basis of our functions

We do this work under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and the Telecommunication Act 1997.

Our role in running public inquiries on access decisions is under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.

Fixed line service projects

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