The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has instituted proceedings against Telstra Corporation Limited for breaches of the Trade Practices Act and Telecommunications Act.
The ACCC has taken this action through the Federal Court in Melbourne in relation to Telstra’s standards access obligations for the Unconditional Local Loop Service (ULLS) and Line Sharing Service (LSS), which according to the ACCC contravenes the Trade Practices Act 1974 (TPA) and Telecommunications Act 1997 (Telco Act).
The standard access obligations under section 152AR of the TPA require Telstra to permit interconnection of facilities to enable the supply of the ULLS and the LSS to access seekers, so they can provide voice and/or ADSL2+ broadband services to retail customers. In addition, Telstra must ensure that access seekers receive equivalent technical and operational quality and timing of interconnection to that which Telstra provides itself.
The ACCC commented “Telstra has refused access seeker requests for the interconnection at seven key metropolitan exchanges by claiming that they were ‘capped’”.
Telstra claims that there was no capacity on the main distribution frames available for access seekers to interconnect their equipment to the copper wires running to customer homes. The ACCC believes that there was capacity available, or it could have been made available to them.
The ACCC has also stated that “Telstra has also breached the access regime in the Telco Act which requires Telstra to provide access to its facilities. Both the standard access obligations and the access regime in the Telco Act are conditions of Telstra’s carrier licence”.
It has also been alleged that Telstra has engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in contradiction of section 52 of the TPA, by representing to access seekers individually and on lists ‘capped’ exchanges published on the Telstra Wholesale website.
This action has been listed for a directions hearing in the Federal Court in Melbourne at 10:15am on Friday 17 April 2009, where the ACCC is seeking declarations, pecuniary penalties and injunctions.