Stuart Corner
Monday, 18 August 2008 11:48
IT Policy -
Government Tech Policy
Page 1 of 3
iiNet, Australia's third largest ISP, and Internode have blasted Communications Alliance, the telecoms industry's peak body, over a report to the ACCC on migrating telephony services to the unconditioned local loop (ULLS) claiming that its supposedly independent processes have been hijacked by Telstra.
Comms Alliance is funded by industry participants who pay membership fees in proportion to their size. As the industry's largest player, Telstra is the largest contributor to Comms Alliance funding.
iiNet's outburst, made in a submission to the ACCC, and Internode's - in an email to iTWire - have their origins in
Telstra's application to the ACCC for exemption for the declared local call service (LCS) wholesale line rental (WLR) service in a number of telephone exchanges. Once these services are exempt from declaration Telstra would be able to withdraw them, forcing providers of telephone services to install their own equipment in each Telstra exchange and use the unconditioned local loop service (ULLS).
However in some cases competitors who already have their own DSLAMs installed are using the line sharing service in conjunction with LCS and WLR to provide bundles of broadband and telephony services. (the telephone signal shares the same copper pair as the broadband signal).
If LCS and WLR were withdrawn in an exchange the competing telco would be required to switch all its customers' telephony services, and broadband, on to the ULLS. Under present arrangements this could leave the customer without a telephone service for up to two weeks. So the ACCC has said that the Telstra must continue to provide LCS and WLR as declared services to competitors using them in conjunction with LSS until an acceptable migration procedure can be put in place. It has defined acceptable as loss of a telephone service for no more than three hours.
The ACCC wrote to Comms Alliance in February requesting it to "address the current lack of industry agreed migration processes by the end of August with a progress report to the ACCC by the end of May." In response, Comms Alliance formed the ULLS Migration Roundtable with representatives invited from its membership. The roundtable met five times between 17th March and 20 May 2008 and the ACCC last week provided a progress report to the ACCC.
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