Telstras ADSL2 agreements to be probed by the ACCC

A probe has begun by the competition regulator with regards to claims that wholesale broadband ADSL2+ agreements from Telstra had conditions of an anti competitive nature attached to them.

Any negotiations between potential wholesale ADSL2+ customer service providers and Telstra will be heavily monitored in the future by the Australian Competition and Consumer commission according the at least two internet service providers.

An un-named chief executive of one of the ISP’s has said that it had requested to release information regarding the network deals offered by Telstra and the commercial terms and conditions that were attached to them. He confirmed that this was a request that the ISP were still considering.
The regulatory manager at the Perth based internet provider iiNet, Steve Dalby said that no request had so far been lodged by the AAC for any information regarding Telstra’s ADSL2+ service and its commercial negotiations to sell the service, however, verbal enquiries had been made as to any intentions its had to resell services provided by Telstra by senior executives from the ACCC.

Mr Dalby said “We were asked verbally if iiNet was reselling ADSL2+ and my response was we had no agreement with Telstra and no offer from Telstra. The conversation didn’t get past that point, so there were no questions about terms.”

Although commercial confidentiality agreements have sealed the commercial terms that Telstra have requested many ISP are complaining that these sort of agreement are merely there as a method of block rivals of Telstra and hold up the building of network infrastructure of its competitors. The prohibition of deals being entered into with other providers of ADSL2+ was one of the term included said the chief executive. An agree for their own ADSL2+ infrastructure construction to be frozen was anoth requirement.

In an effort to overcome non-disclosure agreement problems Mr Dalby said that requests from the ACCC being sent to Telstra and its customers was standard practice.