NBN will do away with Telstra litigation

In the report, the ACCC said consumers have been rewarded with greater competition and investment in telecommunications, the current structure of the industry is likely to limit future pay-offs.

The Telecommunications Report 2007-08 shows that service prices declined universally in that year.

Fixed-line service prices fell by 5.5 percent, mobile voice services by 5.4 percent and internet services by 6.2 percent.

There was also ongoing investment in the industry, including; increased take-up of regulated unbundled services, enabling companies to invest, innovate and compete more strongly for broadband customers; enhancements to the coverage and data capability of 3G networks; and increases in the peak network speeds of Telstra and Optus' cable networks.

Peter Kell, acting chairman at the ACCC said, end users continue to reap the benefits of competition through ongoing investment, innovation and price competition in the telecommunications sector.

"However, Telstra has retained enduring market power.

"As a consequence, the industry remains highly concentrated and regulatory mechanisms are heavily relied on to promote competition.

"In addition, the industry continues to have an extremely high level of disputation and litigation. At the same time, the level of consumer complaints has reached new heights."

In 2007-08, the ACCC was notified of 28 new access disputes and 18 of its determinations were subject to judicial review by the Federal Court.

The industry also received its largest number of consumer complaints in 10 years while consumer protection investigations in the sector rose by 70 percent.

In an interview with CRN, Damian Kay, managing director of Telcoinbox, said once the National Broadband Network is put in place, access will become more open and there will be less litigation and disputes.

"I'm not in a position to say whether or not Telstra plays games in terms of the litigation disputes, all this will change when the NBN is brought in," he said.

"The NBN will be the only time Telcoinabox will become involved in direct access to a network because the difficulty levels that causes disputes will be reduced dramatically."

Kay said telco providers need to take thing one step further and look at where they have dropped their "eye on the ball".

"Providers have become bogged down by litigation and access disputes that they have taken their eye off the ball when it comes to customer service," he said.

"We make our money through customers, who aren't getting a certain level of service because providers are being bogged down by litigation."

Kay said Telcoinabox stays out of the network access disputes by reselling Telstra wholesale services.

"We could've gone with Optus, AAPT or iiNet, but chose Telstra wholesale for the coverage," he said.

"Although the above the line margins are slightly lower, there's instant ROI because there's no capex required."

The complete Telecommunications Report 2007-08 can be found on the ACCC's website.