How Telstra could use WLL to kill the ULL

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 19 August 2007 15:27

Opinion and Analysis

Once Telstra has signed up a customer for this wireless service offering a 'fixed' phone service and broadband Internet access at an attractive price, that customer's copper pair becomes redundant. Telstra has no obligation to either maintain it or leave it in place.

It can re-allocate it to another customer, or simply allow it to fall into disrepair. So, down the track, if and when another service provider comes along hoping to win that customer's business by providing telephony and DSL over that copper pair (or when that customer chooses to change to another service, Telstra will be able to say, "Sorry, that copper pair is no longer available, we have no copper pair available to serve that subscriber, installing a new one will cost $$$$$."

The regulations require Telstra to make that copper pair, known as the unconditioned local loop (ULL), available to other service providers at a price set by the ACC because it is a declared service but only if that 'declared service' is already being provided. The rules state that "Once a service is declared, under Part XIC of the Trade Practices Act, an access provider who supplies a declared service to itself or another person must also supply the service, upon request, to carriage service providers (CSPs)."

In this case, for that customer, Telstra is not supplying the ULL to itself or anyone else. And Access to Next G is not declared. Thus could Telstra re-monopolise the customer access network by stealth: the death of copper in regional Australia by a thousand cuts!

I stress could. This scenario of how Telstra might use a Next G based WLL service is purely speculative. I have no evidence that such a strategy exists.