THE AUSTRALIAN TELECOMMUNICATIONS ACCESS REGIME – TEN YEARS ON

摘要

When open competition was introduced through the Telecommunications Act 1997 (Cth), Part XIB – ThenTelecommunications Industry: Anti-Competitive Conduct and Record-Keeping rules and Part XIC – Telecom-nmunications Access Regime were added to the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) to underpin open competition.nIn moving from the former Government owned monopoly providers to open competition, new competitorsnto the former monopolist Telecom (now Telstra) had to be able to interconnect to Telstra’s infrastructurento be able to provide competing services. The Government’s aim was that, in the first instance, intercon-nnection arrangements would be commercially negotiated. Failing successful negotiations, however, thenAccess Regime provided that the bottleneck facilities could be ‘declared’. Once a service is ‘declared’, thenprovider of the declared service has specific obligations to provide interconnection on specified terms,nwith the possibility that the ACCC can arbitrate disputes on access to ‘declared’ services. Ten years later,nthe effectiveness of the Access Regime is being questioned, by the competition regulator, by Telstra andnby Telstra’s competitors.