[AusNOG] Comms Day on reviews of the Telecoms Act
Catchall
support at twig.com.au
Tue Feb 18 17:01:16 EST 2014
ACMA is definitely needed for the "other" areas of its interest/control,
namely radio.. Without our airwaves would be rife with interference..
ACCC is needed for its "other" areas of interest/control, like stopping
monopolies stangle hard working small businesses.
Not all areas of interest/control are useless in these bodies.. But
perhaps the lines of crossover are too blurred which makes seeing
effective working practices hard to see...
Mal (VK2XFW)
*TWIG Solutions*
/Your Mobile Technology Partner./
*E-mail:* sales at twig.com.au *Phone:* 02 8004 2000
/Supplier of the Bitdefender Security Solutions./
On 18/02/2014 4:46 PM, Geordie Guy wrote:
> Why don't we keep the ACCC and get rid of ACMA?
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 1:01 PM, Narelle <narellec at gmail.com
> <mailto:narellec at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Opinion in CommsDay today comes out swinging against the ACCC and
> some of the pillars of Australia's competition regulation. "[T]he
> time may have come for the ACCC to vacate its role as the de facto
> comptroller and consigliere for the Australian telecommunications
> industry".
>
>
> What would this mean for ACMA? Comms Day may be reading the govt
> correctly, they may be not.
>
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
> Narelle
>
>
>
> From Comms Day today
>
> COMMENT BY GRAHAME LYNCH
>
> *Is a new 2014 Telecommunications Act in the offing?*
>
> Is the Federal government gearing up for the most far-reaching
> overhaul of telecommunications legislation
>
> and regulation in seventeen years---in effect, a new 2014
> Telecommunications Act that replaces
>
> the 1997 act and the telecommunications sections of trade
> practices legislation?
>
> That's certainly the implication of the messaging coming out of
> Canberra over the past few days.
>
> EXHIBIT A: Parliamentary secretary Paul Fletcher told parliament
> last week "the current regulatory
>
> framework is fundamentally based on a 1990s world of relatively
> stable technologies and business
>
> models which placed great emphasis on the predominance of the
> fixed-line network---which was certainly
>
> a valid assumption at the time. Since that time, of course, there
> has been a steady accretion of
>
> layer upon layer of rules and regulations. Some of these rules and
> regulations are important for facilitating
>
> competition but others are not of such evident value in 2014. It
> is timely to ask whether the
>
> policy objectives underpinning particular regulatory measures in
> the communications sector remain
>
> valid; if they do not, the case for those regulations being
> retained is very difficult to see."
>
> EXHIBIT B: The "framing" paper for the NBN cost-benefit review
> released last Thursday night reads
>
> less like a slight calibration of the status quo and more like the
> type of paper one would release if one
>
> was contemplating a complete "re-boot" of the entire policy and
> legislative assumptions that underpin
>
> the Australian telecommunications sector. It states that
> "Australia is unusual in vesting responsibility
>
> for economic regulation of telecommunications in a generalist body
> whose responsibilities include
>
> administration of the competition laws."
>
> "Originally, the decision to transfer those powers to the ACCC was
> based on the view that telecommunications- specific provisions
> would merge over time into the national access regime established
> under Part IIIA of then Trade Practices Act. However, no such
> confluence has occurred nor
>
> seems likely to occur, though it may well be that some aspects of
> the current telecommunications provisions will eventually be
> substantially streamlined. In the light of those considerations,
> and of the
>
> broader factors determining the efficient allocation of functions
> in a regulatory system, the panel
>
> would welcome views on whether the current allocation of
> responsibilities should remain or alternatively,
>
> what alternative approach would be preferable."
>
> EXHIBIT C: The same framing paper invites a complete "re-think" on
> the assumptions underlying
>
> the NBN policy, which, of course, was the end-point of the open
> access debate and policy evolution
>
> that began in earnest as long ago as 2001 and accelerated in 2005
> under Telstra's plea for regulatory
>
> relief so it could build an FTTN network. Among the issues on the
> table: should the NBN refrain
>
> from overbuild of privately held networks that can achieve
> NBN-level functionalities, should retail
>
> service providers be able to buy equity in NBN Co, how should
> cross-subsidies for loss making services
>
> be best provided and most significantly, "What broader structural
> model or models for the industry
>
> should the panel consider"?
>
> The corridors of power now host alternative intellectual
> viewpoints to the access seeker-driven
>
> "victim mentality" agenda that has dominated Australian telecom
> policy for a decade.
>
> The failure of the ACCC to adopt a consistent regulatory approach
> that would provide predictability
>
> and certainty for telecommunications network investors has been
> well catalogued, especially in this
>
> journal, but the regulator persists, oblivious to criticism. Now
> taxpayers are potentially exposed to upwards of tens of billions
> of dollars of liability simply so that My Little ISP Pty Ltd can
> theoretically
>
> play in the same league as Telstra and SingTel.
>
> From 2002 or so, the ACCC acted as if making access seekers more
> reliant on below-cost access to
>
> Telstra's network would somehow reduce Telstra's dominance,
> seemingly blind to the obvious endpoint
>
> that the investment impasse this spawned provided limited short
> term benefits to some citizens
>
> as consumers (the million or two who took a slightly cheaper
> Telstra-sourced, access-seeker resold
>
> broadband service in urban areas) and a medium to long term cost
> to all citizens as taxpayers (who are
>
> exposed to the risk of the 100% government subsidised NBN and are
> compelled to out lay tens of billions of dollars of compensation
> to big bad Telstra).
>
> On one hand we had the ACCC denying that it priced access too low,
> even when at the same time
>
> its own explanatory documents were affirming that it employed
> pricing methodologies such as "retail minus' on already price
> capped retail services precisely because they delivered the lowest
> price outcome.
>
> At the same time, it constantly shifted the methodology goal
> posts, repeatedly deferring costs to
>
> a future which would never arrive: a so-called "tilted annuity"
> designed to reward access seekers with
>
> short term prices well below their sustainable cost. A decade on,
> the ACCC's cost models even now
>
> only allow Telstra to recover costs at a monthly rate of between
> $16 (ULL Band 2) and $24 (ADSL
>
> Wholesale) per line when the copper network's actual replacement
> network in the form of the NBN
>
> has estimated it needed to earn $32 by as soon as next year and
> above $50 within five years to meet
>
> its own (likely over optimistic in itself) business plan.
>
> This ongoing intellectual fraud persisted because of a policy
> environment where a spectacularly
>
> well-organised and articulate access seeker lobby successfully
> equated their own interests with the
>
> "public interest" and created a sense of constant crisis about the
> regulatory regime and Telstra's
>
> "dominance." Concerns over Telstra's dominance and likely
> behaviour under privatisation also led to
>
> a succession of regulations governing its service and connection
> levels, at a potential cost of a billion
>
> or more dollars relative to benefits.
>
> The fact that the vast majority of Telstra access seekers and ISPs
> whose business formation was inspired by the 1997 reforms have
> sold out or merged for collective hundreds of millions of dollars in
>
> shareholder return---nearly 20 such entities bought by iiNet
> alone---demonstrates how over-egged this
>
> sense of perpetual grievance and crisis was. Ditto, the
> nationalisation of fixed network capital investment
>
> and deal to provide tens of billions of dollars of NBN
> compensation to Telstra has correlated
>
> with a near doubling of Telstra's share price since 2010. So much
> for crimping the 600 pound gorilla.
>
> As Malcolm Turnbull memorably described it, one senses a
> conspiracy against the taxpayer.
>
> 1997 ASSUMPTIONS CHANGE: Indeed, developments over the last 17
> years have left behind the
>
> best intentions of the 1997 Telecommunications Act. One obvious
> change was the rise of broadband,
>
> fuelled by the emergence of cheap Chinese-made DSLAMs, and the sea
> change this created in the
>
> layers where value is created over telecommunications
> networks---that is, not just through end user
>
> access charges, but through over-the-top services and serving
> facilities in data centres.
>
> Another was the rise of mobile tech to dominance and its ability
> to offer substitutes to almost every
>
> monetisable service hitherto monopolised by the fixed network.
> Stephen Conroy, his advisers, bureaucrats
>
> and industry supporters, were unfortunately so blindsided by fixed
> access seeker and then
>
> FTTH lobby rhetoric that they failed to react to these
> developments, committing ever more public
>
> policy attention and resource to the apparently vexing but
> increasingly receding priority of vertical
>
> integration and retail dominance in the fixed network access market.
>
> Now the writing is on the wall for these decade-old homilies. The
> new government appears determined
>
> to deliver on red tape reduction in a way its predecessors under
> Rudd, Gillard and Howard
>
> did not---and the vast, unwieldy pot-pourri of 20th century
> telecommunications legislation seems ripe
>
> for dismantling. One of the chief dissenters from the received
> wisdom over the past decade, Professor
>
> Henry Ergas, now sits on the panel charged with providing primary
> advice to government on what
>
> new approach it should adopt, alongside some interesting
> characters such as Alison Deans, who, as a
>
> former Ebay executive, presumably brings a nuanced view of the
> interplay between OTT, access, fixed
>
> and mobile in the telecommunications ecosystem.
>
> The new panel has already overtly signalled that the time may have
> come for the ACCC to vacate
>
> its role as the de facto comptroller and consigliere for the
> Australian telecommunications industry.
>
> Almost certainly the emphasis will be on compelling telecom
> operators---and the private sector more
>
> generally---to take on more of the risk, heavy lifting and reward
> in building and delivering next generation
>
> services. Lest this be seen as a fool's errand it should be
> revealed that Telstra CEO David Thodey
>
> and a representative of Optus' ultimate owner Temasek are meeting
> with Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey
>
> later this week to discuss how to unlock private sector capital
> for infrastructure investment. Legislative
>
> and regulatory incentives---and disincentives-- will almost
> certainly be a topic for discussion.
>
>
>
> --
>
>
> Narelle Clark
> president at isoc-au.org.au <mailto:president at isoc-au.org.au>
> narellec at gmail.com <mailto:narellec at gmail.com>
>
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