Telstra's ACT exchange upgrade has ISPs fuming

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 04 March 2009 10:37

IT Industry - Market

Alternatively, "they could cancel the affected ULLS and LSS and talk with their Telstra Wholesale account manager about the possibility of migrating their ULLS and LSS back to Telstra resale products."

This did not impress iiNet director regulatory, Steve Dalby, who doubted Telstra's suggestion that iiNet would be able to continue to provide ULL and LSS based services even if it were to wear the cost of external equipment housing. He told ITWIRE "If Telstra can guarantee that they will make all efforts to facilitate such arrangements within the 15 weeks notice period, then this is a viable option. The truth is they won't and haven't in the past."

He also doubted Telstra's stated commitment to offering resale alternatives to the ULL and LSS based services. "While that is a lovely public position, in private, it would probably be more like: 'While alternative wholesale services to the ULLSs may be available after the relocation of the sub-exchange, at this stage, it is not clear if or when Telstra may provide such alternative services and Telstra does not guarantee the availability of any such services after it ceases supplying the ULLs'."

Access disputes looming
Dalby also disputed Telstra's ability to unilaterally disrupt declared services like ULLS and LSS. He told ITWire "These are declared products so there are price and non-price terms and conditions that we can dispute and we have done that in the past. We still have access disputes on LSS and ULLS - more than the monthly charge. Telstra reserves the right to give us notifications like this. We have always disputed that clause."

While the practice by Telstra of pushing fibre further out into its network by installing remote integrated multiplexors (RIMs) is not new Dalby said its impact had increased significantly with the uptake of ULL services.

"Telstra does not offer naked DSL. We do, but it is only in the last 12 months that it has achieved any penetration. Previously if we could no longer provide service over LSS we could usually get a wholesale service from Telstra and the difference was not that great."

He added: "Most of the RIMs that I am aware of have a very small number of customers over long lines 6-7km so customers were not getting a great service anyway, and putting in a RIM in that situation was hard to disagree with. The Deakin situation is very different. There are more customers involved and they are not that far away from the exchange. They were getting at lease 8Mbps."

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