ACCC Takes Telstra To Court – A Sign They’re Needed For NBN?
Over the years we’ve seen the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) instigate various legal action against Australia’s largest telecommunications provider, Telstra. This Wednesday saw the ACCC announce further legal action.
From what is known it seems that the ACCC are investigating Telstra for giving wholesalers information that they believe is untrue.
Initial investigations by the ACCC found that Telstra denied wholesalers access to several metropolitan telephone exchanges claiming that they were “capped”.
The ACCC specifically alleges that:
“…there was capacity available, or that could have been made available, on Telstra’s main distribution frames.”
Telstra said in a statement:
“The ACCC is suing us for something we proactively and voluntarily reviewed and fixed a year ago. This case relates to a small number of inadvertent process issues. There was an issue and we fixed it – without the involvement of the ACCC. Since we fixed the problem a year ago, the ACCC has not once suggested it had problems with our new processes.”
David Quilty, Telstra’s Group Managing Director of Public Policy and Communications said that the court action was a complete waste of court time and taxpayer money.
The ACCC announcement came to the table on the same day as rumours started to appear claiming the National Broadband Network (NBN) winner.
The rumour suggested that Acacia have won the NBN, and if so they’ll be hoping for legislative change to allow it access to Telstra’s network.
Once a Federal Court directions hearing is held on April 17th we’ll know more.
