ACCC won’t reveal NBN capacity purchased by telcos

ACCC to reveal market share of smaller NBN players

The Australian Competition and Consumer will release data that reveals that market share of smaller telcos that purchase access to NBN’s network. However it said today it had decided against revealing the ratio of NBN capacity (CVC) to number of end users across individual telcos.

The ACCC releases a quarterly snapshot of the state of the National Broadband Network wholesale market based on data released to it by NBN. The competition watchdog today revealed it had revised its disclosure direction to NBN.

The new rules mean that NBN will hand over greater detail on the geographic breakdown of services in operation on the new network, as well as the market share of smaller network access seekers (those telcos that have a direct relationship with NBN, as opposed to smaller resellers who purchase network access from a wholesaler).

Currently, the quarterly report groups NSW and the ACT, South Australia and the NT, and Victoria and Tasmania (with Queensland and WA reported separately). The ACCC said that from the March 2018 quarter onwards, services would be broken down by individual state and territory.

The ACCC said it had also changed the market share threshold for identifying telcos from 5 per cent to 1 per cent. As a result, more access seekers will be named in the report.

The ACCC will also be publishing the amount of CVC purchased at each of the 121 NBN Points of Interconnect (POIs)

However the ACCC said it would not be revealing greater details about CVC utilisation, including the average CVC to AVC (individual service) ratio for NBN access seekers.

The ACCC said that submissions from Telstra, Optus, NBN and industry group Communications Alliance “indicated that due to differences in how NBN access seekers acquired and provisioned CVC across their NBN services, such information might be misinterpreted if published”.

Support for greater disclosure came from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), the Competitive Carriers Coalition, and New Street Research.

“The ACCC considered stakeholder submissions on these matters and, on balance, decided not to proceed with the additional disclosure of CVC utilisation at this point in time because of the sensitivity of the information and potential for misinterpretation of the different CVC provisioning levels between NBN access seekers,” the ACCC said in its explanatory statement.

“The ACCC will continue to internally monitor and analyse the confidential CVC utilisation information that NBN Co reports under the NBN SIO [services in operation] RKR [record keeping rules],” the ACCC said.

“This analysis will be improved further by the implementation of the recent NBN SIO RKR variation to require more detailed reporting of CVC information and other data collected by the ACCC.”

The most recent wholesale indicators report released by the ACCC revealed that, overall, telcos were purchasing more CVC.

In total, telcos were purchasing almost 5287Gbps of Traffic Class 4 capacity (the NBN traffic class used for standard Internet services) as of the end of December 2017. That compares to around 3364Gbps at the end of September 2017.

The commission is preparing to release the first batch of data gathered as part of its broadband performance monitoring program, which is expected to include a breakdown of end user performance encountered across a number of NBN retail service providers (RSPs).

  The ACCC revealed earlier this month that NBN-related complaints rose “significantly” during 2016-17.

Join the newsletter!

Or

Sign up to gain exclusive access to email subscriptions, event invitations, competitions, giveaways, and much more.

Membership is free, and your security and privacy remain protected. View our privacy policy before signing up.

Error: Please check your email address.

Tags broadbandNetworkingnational broadband networkTelecommunicationsNational Broadband Network (NBN)Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC)

More about ACTAustraliaAVCClassCommunications AllianceCVCNBN CoOptus

Show Comments
[]