ACCC action 'a waste of time': Telstra

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 19 March 2009 10:52

IT Industry - Market

A senior Telstra executive has branded ACCC action against the company as "a complete waste of court time and taxpayer money."

As reported earlier today, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is taking legal action against Telstra http://www.itwire.com/content/view/23922/127/ alleging the carrier falsely claimed there was no space at certain exchanges for competitors to install their equipment.

Telstra has now asserted that the matter refers to a situation that the company itself identified and fixed more than a year ago, and has branded the case as "a complete waste of court time and taxpayer money."

According to David Quilty, Telstra group managing director public policy and communications, "This case relates to a small number of inadvertent process issues. There was an issue and we fixed it - without the involvement of the ACCC. Since we fixed the problem a year ago, the ACCC has not once suggested it had problems with our new processes."

Telstra claims that in 2008 it responded to industry concerns by reviewing its internal processes for determining when an exchange is full, and the result of that review was that of the 76 exchanges listed as full, 24 were taken off the list.

However, 24 other exchanges were listed as "potentially capped" - presumably this means they were close to capacity.

Still, as Telstra points out, that means less than one percent of exchanges were categorised as full.

What do Telstra's competitors have to say on the matter? See page 2.