Telstra's UK 'expert' all "false assumptions and bias" says T4

by Stuart Corner

Friday, 29 August 2008

Page 1 of 2 ! Telstra's competitors have re-iterated concerns raised by iTWire in July about former Ofcom executive Kip Meek's knowledge of the Australian market, on the eve of his visit to Australia to lobby government on behalf of Telstra. According to the T4 group of Telstra's competitors, "Telstra will roll out another hired gun to talk about competition and regulation in the Australian telecommunications sector this week. But scratch beneath the surface of the 'factual analysis' Telstra's expert presents and you will find little more than false assumptions and bias."   T4 said that Meek, a former commissioner of UK regulator Ofcom, and currently chair of the UK's Broadband Stakeholders Group, would be in Canberra on Wednesday 3 September to discuss a report titled 'Operational Separation in Australia and the UK', that he was commissioned to write by Telstra. "The report unsurprisingly concurs with Telstra's own views that structural separation is unnecessary in Australia. It follows the Telstra party line because the analysis is drawn exclusively from information provided by Telstra – with no input from its wholesale customers or competitors," T4 said. The report was commissioned by Telstra earlier this year and given to the Government as a submission to its review of regulation in preparation for the national broadband network. In it Meek was highly critical of operational separation, saying: "The UK form of separation was designed to address severe problems of non-price discrimination which, on the basis of evidence I have seen, do not exist in Australia and I would not recommend that the UK form of separation be used as a starting point in the Australian context. I am also of the view... that more radical measures, such as structural separation, would involve substantially escalated risk and costs. The demand risks and uncertainties associated with building an NGN, especially where it is intended to replace the PSTN, seem to me to raise doubts about whether a non-vertically integrated approach would be able to achieve the necessary level of investment co-ordination." However as iTWire pointed out at the time, by Meek's own admission, his report was "written on the basis of a review of the relevant documentation, including ACCC reports on Telstra's non-price performance, and a week long trip to Australia during which I met Telstra executives; I did not interview executives or stakeholders outside Telstra." Warning of his impending presentation T4 said: "It would appear Mr Meek has fallen into the same trap as another Telstra commissioned mouth piece, Professor Martin Cave." "If Mr Meek were interested in presenting a true picture of competition and regulation in the Australian market he would have talked to any number of Telstra's wholesale customers, local industry bodies or stakeholders," he said. "Without this information, his analysis is fundamentally flawed." In light of what it said was "the obvious bias of his research." T4 proposed five questions that should be put to Meek "in an attempt to gain a more balanced view of the local market and regulatory landscape." Please see the following page for these. CONTINUED << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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