Australia regulates retail access to high-speed networks

Australian competition regulator ACCC has decided to require most operators of high-speed broadband networks to grant wholesale access to rival providers.

Fiber and VDSL network services with a downstream data rate of over 25Mbps have been declared, meaning network owners must provide wholesale access on request.

Where commercial terms cannot be agreed upon, the wholesale access must be provided at a regulated rate of between A$22.14 and A$27 per port per month, or A$17.50 to A$29.27 per Mbps per month.

Exceptions apply for high-speed broadband services in metro areas, where competition is already effective, and for network operators with fewer than 20,000 customers. There is also a moratorium for specific networks in some areas that need to be reconfigured to support wholesale provision.

“This is an acknowledgment that all superfast broadband networks – regardless of their size – display natural monopoly characteristics. What this access declaration does is provide retailers with the opportunity to enter superfast broadband markets, and in turn increase competition,” ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said.

“This decision will also help to simplify and clarify the existing regulations that apply to superfast broadband services, allowing all retail providers to compete on their relative merits, regardless of the technology used, when the network was constructed, or who operates it.”

In practice, the move also means that competing commercial high-speed broadband networks to the wholesale only National Broadband Network (NBN) will have to compete on a similar footing.

This is in line with regulations designed to prevent retail providers from cherry-picking by concentrating their deployments only on the most profitable areas, in contrast to the NBN which needs to provide universal access.