Stuart Corner
Monday, 09 October 2006 11:47
Opinion and Analysis
Page 3 of 4
A book could be written on how the ACCC does this (and indeed many have, by the ACCC, in support of every decision to declare or not declare a service), but for Telstra to make no attempt to give some sort of overview of this process is, to say the least, a great over-simplification of the risk.
This at least is better than Telstra Sol Trujillo's offering on the issue of regulated access to the Next G network in the Q&A session of Friday's Investor day.
Asked "Can the exclusivity of the offers [on the Next G network] be protected particularly in the context of prospective regulatory intervention that would seek to make equivalent wholesale access for your competitors?" Trujillo replied:
"I think that the thing that I have heard the regulator speak to is this idea about encouraging facility-based competition, [true] and what they like about the whole DSL play that has been going on is in fact that there are now other players investing to compete, [also true] which personally I agree with, I think is a good thing in the marketplace to be able to do.
"Now that we have taken shareholder money and built a new network [Next G], to say to Telstra shareholders, 'Now you need to send your investment and the associated returns to Singapore or to Hong Kong or to London," I don't think makes good policy and I don't think it makes sense and I'm not sure that that's what the regulator would want to see happen given their policy statement around facility based competition."
