ACCC court case slammed by Telstra

Telstra have said that the decision made by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) to take it to court for allegedly lying with regards to its inability to provide other carriers with wholesale services is a waste of both money and court time.

In a recent statement David Quilty, the group managing director, public policy and communications for Telstra said “The ACCC is suing us for something we proactively and voluntarily reviewed and fixed a year ago.”

In the beginning of 2008 a review of processes for determining when an exchange building was full had been started said Telstra, and from July last year the introduction of  new regulations that forced the telco to keep records of telephone exchange activities by the ACCC had  given it a good insight into what Telstra was doing. The Commission had given no notification of problems with any of the telco’s processes until now, said Telstra.

Quilty said “There was an issue and we fixed it — without the involvement of the ACCC. Since we fixed the problem a year ago, the ACCC has not once suggested it had problems with our new processes.”

According to Telstra the company has over 5000 exchanges, of which 76 had originally been listed as full said the telco, however, as a result of the review 24 of these exchanges were removed from the list immediately and a further 24 listed as “potentially capped”, which means that an exchange is capped until the completion of any out-of-the-ordinary work is completed according to the ACCC.

Quilty said “You have a situation where a company proactively checks its processes, finds minor and inadvertent errors, immediately rectifies the problem but is hounded through the courts regardless.”

The selling of line sharing and unbundled local loop services to any telcos wishing to provide ADSL2+ broadband or voice to their retail customers is currently an obligation for Telstra. It has been alleged that access to seven key metropolitan exchanges have been refused by Telstra because no space was available in the exchange for equipment to be installed by access seekers when either action could have been taken to make space or there actually was space there according to the ACCC.

Steve Dalby the chief regulatory officer for iiNet said that a need for “substantial and wide sweeping” regulatory reform was shown by the case and a complete structural separation of both the National Broadband Network (NBN), no matter who builds it, and Telstra. It also showed why the keys to any new network should not be given to Telstra said Dalby.