Four telcos – Spark, Chorus, Vodafone and 2Degrees Mobile – will pay the lions’ share of the NZ$50 million Telecommunications Development Levy (TDL) for 2015/16 proposed by New Zealand’s competition enforcement and regulatory agency, The Commerce Commission.
The commission issued a draft decision on the NZ$50m liability allocation for 15 telecommunications providers on Monday and says Spark, Chorus, Vodafone and 2Degrees Mobile will pay over 90% of the contributions.
The levy — about 1% of telecommunications services revenue — is paid by companies, or groups of companies, earning more than NZ$10 million per year from operating a component of a public telecommunications network (fixed or wireless).
The draft decision sets out how much of the NZ$50 million levy each of these "qualifying liable persons" should pay in proportion to their qualified revenue.
{loadposition peter}The New Zealand Government uses the annual levy to pay for telecommunications infrastructure including the relay service for the deaf and hearing-impaired, broadband for rural areas, and improvements to the 111 emergency service.
The Commission has also released its 2015/16 draft determination on the cost of the Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) operated by Sprint International New Zealand for the hearing and speech impaired. The Commission’s draft calculation has determined that the cost for that period is NZ$2.6 million, which is payable by the Crown out of the NZ$50 million levy.
Submissions on both draft decisions by the Commission need to be submitted by 14 November.
To access the 2015/16 levy draft decision click here, and for the 2015/16 TRS draft cost decision click here.