John Linton Australia's ACCC seems to have few friends either in business or in 'consumer land' if media reports and court judgments over the years are anything to go by - and given its track record that is unsurprising. That probably made its recent decision to mandate that Telstra had to lower its PSTN rental costs on some PSTN changes remarkable which was why I commented on it yesterday. Last week I had read a report about the UK telecommunications 'regulator' saying it was going to force British Telecom (the UK former government telecommunications publicly owned monopoly since sold off to private investors) to progressively lower it's PSTN line charges each year for three successive years:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/broadband/8419444/Broadband-prices-to-fall.html
which seemed, at least to me, an extraordinary thing to do. The charges BT makes for residential and wholesale lines are so much lower than Australians can ever dream about it seems an unnecessary aspect of pricing but presumably it is based on some EU pricing regime. The more interesting aspect of this short article is the presumption that a government agency could ever determine what should be charged for any service - particularly a service that is provided by a sold off public utility that, when it was owned by the government, established the pricing models under which services were provided. I know this is the case in Australia too but I have never agreed with such actions personally as the only mechanism that enforces them is totally unskilled and lacks even a basic knowledge of how telecommunications services are delivered.
In our country it is interesting to see the ongoing pursuit of "one law for them and another law for us" in that the enabling legislation specifically excludes any 'oversight' of NBN pricing by the ACCC. Why is that? If the 'gubmant' thought that the Telecom Australia monopoly (when consigned to private ownership via the Telecommunication Acts of 1997/2006) needed that enabling legislation to specifically include ACCC oversight why is the reverse situation now the case. Why doesn't the new universal monopoly require any pricing oversight?....because we're the government and you can trust us?
I suppose it is in line with the current announcement that 14 separate tenderer's bids to build the 'NBN2' are unacceptable and now the tender will be awarded to a 'friend of the government' via secret negotiation. I cant help but wonder how much money was paid to 'right' people for that piece of chicanery to take place? Or maybe it's really all straight forward and above board and some persons have saved the Australian taxpayer from being ripped off by 13 other construction companies? We live in strange times that we have brought on ourselves - well at least they were brought on ourselves by a couple of venal hayseeds that betrayed the people who voted for them and a woman who sold her soul.
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