Farmers call on Gov't to force Telstra to retain ISDN

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 31 July 2008 14:04

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

Primus noted in particular the significance of these services when customers seek high quality and reliable data services and claimed that "comparable and appropriately substitutable services are not available in rural and regional areas to meet these needs...The inferior products and services suggested by Telstra as substitutable are not truly comparable services, and are therefore not substitutable in the eyes of either consumers or service providers."

Primus also noted that the pricing of some of these alleged substitutes made any comparison prohibitive. "An analysis of pricing discloses that BDSL [business grade DSL] services could never be considered as an alternative to ISDN...The pricing for BDSL as published by Telstra clearly demonstrates that it is not comparable or substitutable for ISDN services."

Primus highlighted videoconferencing as "the key remaining application on ISDN [that] can be expected to remain active for many years." It said that videoconferencing was based on making several simultaneous ISDN 64kbps calls over Basic Rate Access ISDN (BRI) or Primary Rate Access ISDN (PRI) and that users of reliable business-quality videoconferencing were reluctant to migrate to using the Internet because of the lack of a quality of service (QoS) on Telstra ADSL services at prices comparable to ISDN.

"A video conference requires around 384kbps both-ways to provide comparable quality to ISDN. Customers on lines that are beyond approximately 4km [from the exchange] will not achieve 384kbps in one or other direction via ADSL, but will usually still be able to purchase ISDN BRI and PRI. The lack of QoS on Telstra ADSL creates several points where a videoconference will fail due to competing traffic demands."

A joint submission from AAPT, PowerTel, Primus, Macquarie Telecom and Optus also called for extension of declaration: for at least three year, arguing that without declaration Telstra would be under no obligation to continue offering these wholesale services and that the claimed substitutes were inferior.