Telstra says competitors' DSL enquiry subs "inaccurate

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 14 February 2012 06:13

IT Policy - Regulation

Telstra has written to the ACCC to correct what it says are "factual inaccuracies" in the submissions made by access seekers to the ACCC's enquiry into declaring the wholesale ADSL service.

The bulk of Telstra's complaints are directed at the submission from law firm Herbert Geer on behalf of iiNet, Internode, Adam Internet, Primus and TransACT.

The submission claimed that: "the ordering and provisioning annex to CRA 71D contains a documented 30GB usage cap per service. Telstra can also impose speed restrictions on customers downstream of a RIM if they claim that the backhaul from the RIM is congested."

Telstra said there was "no such restriction in that annex". However it did concede that: "Telstra may suspend, limit or cancel a service if Telstra considers there to be excessive or unusual usage of the service.' Excessive or unusual usage includes (by way of example), if an end user is uploading more data than they are downloading, and the total data uploaded and downloaded exceeds 30GB."

It explains: "Telstra imposes such a limitation in order to prevent its backhaul infrastructure from collapsing under the weight of demand...In Telstra's view, end users who are uploading more than they are downloading and who exceed 30GB in data transfers are unlikely to be consumer end users in view of the unusually high volume of uploaded data."

Telstra also took issue with Herbert Geer's statement that Telstra can impose speed restrictions on customers downstream of a RIM if it claims that the backhaul from the RIM is congested. However it conceded that speed restrictions were applied to ease congestion.

"Telstra 'shapes' or 'throttles down' 8Mbps services on congested DSLAMs as one of a range of measures introduced to manage congestion and limited backhaul availability," Telstra said.