Primus smells costly ADSL hell for consumers if ADSL2+ not ‘declared’

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 07 February 2008 08:28

Opinion and Analysis

Primus also claims that Telstra has been misleading it its attempts to claim the Australian Federal Government has “decided against declaring the ADSL2+ service”, with Bhatia saying that: “That is misleading on the part of Telstra.  The Government provided no such guarantee, and why should it.  It has no formal role in the matter.” 

Primus goes on to say that it is understood the Government had earlier expressed a view that it wasn’t necessary to regulate ADSL2+ services at this time with Bhatia saying: “That view was based on a critical misunderstanding.”  

Bhatia continued that: “Telstra has denied competitors access to exchanges across Australia, and ISP’s need access to those exchanges to deploy their own networks.  This conduct by Telstra has stymied the development of facilities based competition, and the Government was not aware of this”, with Primus saying they will be “writing to Senator Conroy to correct this misunderstanding”. 

Primus also made sure to note that, in the past, the ACCC has previously issued two competition notices regarding Telstra’s anticompetitive supply of ADSL services.   

So, we can surely expect to see a sustained campaign from Telstra’s competitors as they seek to get the ACCC and Telstra fighting again in an attempt to get affordable, wholesale access to Telstra’s ADSL2+ network, something that, in theory at least, would be great for competition and should see cheaper prices for consumers.

As a consumer, that’s a great thing, but we can be sure that Telstra will fight tooth and nail to stop this from happening.