AAPT strikes new deal for access to Telstra's wholesale services

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 29 July 2009 11:12

IT Industry - Strategy

Telstra Wholesale and AAPT have reached commercial agreement on a broad range of products and services delivered over Telstra’s local access network that are essential to enable AAPT to compete in the provision of telephony services

They are wholesale line rental (WLR), local carriage service (LCS) and PSTN originating & terminating access (PSTN OTA). Wholesale line rental allows other telcos to rent a line from Telstra for on-rental to their customers. PSTN originating & terminating access are used by telcos that have their own network of telephone exchanges but have to be able to receive and deliver calls over Telstra’s customer access network. The local carriage service (LCS) allows these service providers to resell Telstra local calls to end users

Telstra Wholesale group managing director Paul Geason said: “This agreement clearly demonstrates that Telstra Wholesale is eager and willing to work with its customers to achieve commercial results for all parties.” AAPT CEO Paul Broad said Telstra and AAPT had developed a pragmatic commercial relationship over many years. “We have reached an agreement which enables AAPT to continue offering competitively-priced, innovative products and services to our customers.”

The agreement, however comes just days after the ACCC finalised a decision to maintain ‘declaration of these services for a further five years from 30 June 2009. Declaration gives it the power to arbitrate if the parties are unable to reach agreement, and to set prices according to indicative prices and pricing principles it has developed.

The agreement also follows a landmark court decision earlier this month against Telstra in which Telstra had challenged the ACCC’s decision in 14 of these arbitrations (although the ACCC’s arbitrations related to declared services other than those covered by tis AAPT- Telstra agreement). In the Federal Court of NSW and the court heard all cases together with the ACCC as the first respondent in each case and the various service providers the second respondent. Justice Lindgren found against Telstra in all 14 cases and ordered Telstra to costs of all respondents.

Telstra and AAPT have had a commercial relationship covering Telstra Wholesale services since 1991 when AAPT was one of the first telcos to exploit  new legislation enabling greater competition in the telecoms services market.