New Zealand’s competition enforcement and regulatory agency, The Commerce Commission, says the country’s largest telecommunications infrastructure provider, Chorus, should upgrade its capacity as needs grow so that telcos and consumers can continue to make the best use of the capacity of copper lines.
The commission made its comments when handing down its final decision in a review of the non-price features of the Unbundled Bitstream Access (UBA) service which enables retail telcos to provide Internet services over Chorus’ copper network without installing their own equipment in exchanges.
The Commission reset UBA prices in 2015 and subsequently reviewed the service that Chorus must provide to retail companies, with the aim of ensuring that the UBA service can continue to be used by retailers to provide the “best possible range of competitive broadband services over copper”.
In its final decision, the main change has been to add a standard that ultimately requires Chorus to keep its UBA service free of congestion as traffic usage grows.
{loadposition peter}Telecommunications Commissioner Dr Stephen Gale said there had been general agreement throughout the review that the UBA service should keep pace with consumer demand.
“While migration to the new fibre network is progressing apace, UBA will remain a key input for retail broadband for some time yet, particularly in areas beyond the reach of the ultrafast broadband initiative.
“We are confident that the new standard will not lead to inefficient investment, even if copper is deregulated in UFB areas as currently proposed by MBIE.”
Dr Gale notes that the Commission has exempted around 19,000 lines in Chorus’ remote legacy networks from the new service standards until it is clear how much the service to these consumers will be upgraded through the second phase of the government’s Rural Broadband Initiative.
The commisssion’s final decision, released on Tuesday, followed release of a draft decision late last year in which it said Chorus should upgrade its capacity as needs grow so that retail telecommunications companies and consumers can continue to make best use of the capacity of copper lines.