Ravi Bhatia comments on Telstra’s blocked exchange response
I appreciate Simon Hackett and Kate McKenzie bringing some discussion to the access to exchanges issues. While we sincerely respect Kate, I must regretfully state that she has gotten her facts wrong in relation to TEBA access process, percentage of capped exchanges, queue times and waiting periods, etc. She has clearly been misinformed.
Some of the facts have become very clear to all over the last several months. Firstly, competitors like Primus and Internode are being blocked from installing broadband equipment in public telephone exchanges.
Secondly, where access to exchanges is permitted Telstra is imposing unnecessary and inefficient design and build processes. These processes can delay builds for up to 2 to 3 years and cannot be supported by best practice engineering or safety grounds. And thirdly, despite repeated requests from many ISPs, Telstra refuses to consider implementing a more effective and efficient process for deploying equipment at exchanges.
The undeniable impact of this conduct on the part of Telstra is to stymie the evolution of full broadband competition in Australia. While it is obvious these matters need to be addressed urgently, the frustrating thing for companies like Primus is that Telstra holds all the cards and refuses to come to the table, even just to talk. Why? My observation as an industry participant is that we have seen a cultural shift at Telstra. The culture has moved from challenging competitors to a culture of refusing to accept a competitive market.
Take this week’s Bill introduced by the Government to preserve the foundations of the current competitive industry. The regime had been under sustained, hostile and unwarranted attack by Telstra. To put it bluntly, Telstra sought to destroy competitors like Primus; and the Government has decided to step in to protect the competitive process and the interests of consumers.
Similarly, Telstra is opposed to providing access to public telephone exchanges – as mandated by legislation – because it grows the competitive market. It is Telstra’s refusal to accept competition that leads us to the current predicament where competitors are blocked from public telephone exchanges. Curiously, Telstra has no such impediments or arbitrary delays imposed when it wishes to deploy its own DSLAMS.
While I’m very aware this matter looks to be heading towards the courts, that’s clearly not the best solution for the industry, competition or consumers. Primus simply wants rightful access to telephone exchanges to deploy our own network as was intended by the regulatory regime.
The antiquated and arbitrary process currently imposed by Telstra to regulate physical access to public telephone exchanges needs to be rewritten. Incredulously, Kate McKenzie seems willing to defend that process. I hope she will be willing to sit down with industry participants and share those views. I am pleased to extend to her the opportunity to do so.
Kate also says there is nothing mysterious or anti-competitive about the capping of exchange sites. Well, I would like to invite Kate to a couple or more of “capped” sites and she can see for herself the true situation in relation stopping deployment of our own equipment there.
I am strongly in favour of quick interaction to resolve these issues immediately.
Simon Hackett responds to Kate McKenzie
I read, with interest, the letter this morning from Kate McKenzie in response to my own. Having written and sent letters to Kate multiple times in the last year on these and other issues, without response, it is gratifying to be reassured that she is, indeed, safe and well.
What is ignored in the response is any apparent interest in resolving these ‘capping’ situations - impacting hundreds of thousands of consumers living in their service areas - and they can be resolved. There are multiple approaches by which a theoretically ‘full’ MDF can be overcome, and there is no lack of will (or preparedness to invest) from competitors to do so. Internode (and others) are willing to negotiate with Telstra to determine and deploy one or more of those approaches, but we fear (and indeed expect) that the primary tool of a monopoly—extreme delay—will come to the fore in this regard as it has with exchange access issues in general, as and it has with cross-provider churn (where delays have stretched out into years, and where critical ULLS/LSS churn processes remain absent to this day).
With regard to regional routes - we don’t expect the cost on those routes to be ‘cheap’, we expect the cost to be ‘fair’ - and today they simply are not. It is surprising to see the ‘others will not invest in regional areas’ argument being run here in the context of Internode, of all companies; Internode, through its carrier and regional business, Agile, has spent most of a decade constructing and deploying regional broadband infrastructure in Band 3 areas in South Australia - indeed it was Internode, and not Telstra, who first serviced a number of regional SA exchanges with ADSL, literally years ahead of Telstra, using backhaul constructed from scratch due to the high cost of Telstra backhaul on the very same paths. We know what it costs to do this. And we know in detail the magnitude of the unfair advantage that is embedded in Telstra being handed these regional transmission routes on a plate in the past.
In the end, it is the regulator who must decide whether the conduct of Telstra in these regards is acceptable. And Internode is merely one of many Access Seekers who are submitting evidence and asking the regulator to re-evaluate that situation right now. We trust that the ACCC will continue its difficult, but necessary, task in this regard and will retain its resolve to act effectively in the interests of consumers—not Telstra and not Internode.
Simon Hackett MD, Internode
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In Kate's letter, she
In Kate's letter, she claimed as little as 1 per cent of exchanges are full. According to adsl2exchanges.com.au there are at least 80 full exchanges. How many Telstra exchanges are there? According to Telstra's wholesale reports there are 2747 unique exchanges. That would put the number of full exchanges at nearly 3 per cent over the total. Or, in other words, nearly 3 times as many as Kate McKenzie is claiming. Please, Ravi and Simon, keep fighting for consumer interests!
COMMSDAY EDITOR'S NOTE: Telstra has around 5,000 exhanges. 80 is between 1 and 2% of that total.