Telstra launches next generation network, 'Next IP'

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 26 April 2007 10:45

Opinion and Analysis

The recurring theme was 'only Telstra', that Telstra alone has the pervasive IP network to make these services deliverable and the resources to develop and deploy them.

Again, probably all true. But the flipside of this is that renewed vigilance will be required to ensure that Telstra does not abuse its market power.

Australia' competition regulation talks about dominance "in a market" and whenever a question of market power arises, the ACCC goes to great lengths to ask: what market?: by geography, by product or service, by customer segment or a combination of all of these.

In old world telecommunications fixed and mobile voice services, data, Internet access, etc were all distinctly separate services carried on distinctly separate network. With Next IP that is no longer true. Not only is Telstra a provider of ever kind of service that will now carried over its seamless homogeneous network it is a major if not the leading provider of most of these services and in almost every market it which it operates. The potential for market dominating synergies is mind boggling.

Telstra has often complained that today's telecoms regulatory regime is an anachronism: a regime introduced to cater for the liberalisation of its monopoly a decade ago. It wants them scrapped or greatly revised.

It will certainly need to be: to control an enormously powerful player uniquely well placed to exploit the 'one network - every service' possibilities that Next IP brings will almost certainly require tools that the ACCC does not presently possess.