Telecommunications
Telstra Bill in Senate
(1 March 2010) Legislation designed to bring about a radical restructuring of Telstra was introduced into the Senate on 25 February but will not now be dealt with until March.
The Bill contains amendments to telecommunications competition laws designed to strengthen the hand of the ACCC and amendments to consumer protections which tighten up the Universal Service Obligation (USO) and Customer Service Guarantee (CSG) schemes.
But the parts of the Bill that overshadow all others are those that require either the structural or functional separation of Telstra.
These provisions are in turn closely linked to the Government’s planned NBN roll-out. They are designed to encourage Telstra to “voluntarily” migrate its wholesale traffic across to NBN Co as its fibre network is rolled out, thus ensuring that the NBN has at least one major customer from Day 1. If such a scheme can’t be agreed upon within 90 days of the Bill becoming law, Telstra will face functional separation, divestiture of its HFC and Foxtel assets and spectrum starvation.
As reported in E-bulletin #2, however, reaching an agreement on this traffic transfer that meets the needs of NBN Co, Telstra and the Government is proving to be no easy task, with both Telstra CEO David Thodey and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy recently stressing the complexity of the issues.
Given this recognition, it must be asked what purpose is served by bringing on the legislation at this time.
For more information, contact the CEPU via feedback@cepu.asn.au