The Labor Party has condemned the current regime for its lack of leadership in driving the telecommunications sector into a competitive market.
Speaking at the now 2001 ATUG-CeBIT Forum, the Shadow Minister for Communications Stephen Smith said that if Labor were to be elected this year, Telstra would have no choice but to drive its network at lower prices.
"We need to ensure the local loop is fully unbundled, ensuring more competition," Smith said.
Smith says the competitive regime has failed to deliver fully.
"There has been an abuse of market power, Telstra is still too dominant in a lot of areas."
In his keynote address, the Minister for Communications and IT, Senator Richard Alston, who outlined plans to beef-up the powers of the competition watchdog, said he believed there was "fairly clear evidence" that real competition has developed in the market by the reduction in prices consumers pay for services and the range of services available.
"Despite the fact that we have full and open competition we cannot ignore the fact that a single very powerful and effective player still dominates the market place."
Broadband lags
Smith criticised the slow rollout by the competitive regime of broadband services to rural, regional and remote areas, saying that only now Telstra has started to provide the service.
"It can't afford to hide behind the local loop, Telstra should seek to grow broadband market by providing competitive prices,
"There needs to be fair access to the infrastructure for both the consumer and provider," he said.
Alston says, however, the widespread availability of affordable broadband services is high on the government's agenda.
"Australia's broadband services are broadly on a par with its international counterparts in terms of price, deployment, and penetration," he added, pointing out that a recent OECD study - ranking 30 countries in terms of broadband take-up per 100 inhabitants - ranked Australia number 13, above the UK, Germany and Norway.
Telstra's most recent projections for Australian broadband subscribers include 2.5 million users by 2005.
ACCC powers
Alston said there were certain measures that could be taken to streamline the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) arbitration process. Such measures might include multilateral arbitrations, pricing principles, sharing of information, appointment of 'specialist arbitrators' and commercial negotiators and indicative time limits.
The parties on both sides of access issues have expressed the view that more effort could be made to achieve closure by the appointment of specialist arbitrators, who would complement the existing skills of the ACCC and hasten outcomes.
Multilateral arbitrations would allow matters involving similar issues to be considered together, rather than separately.
In addition to saving time, there could also be savings in terms of administrative costs and the gathering and sharing of information, Alston said.
