ACCC's disdainful stance on the NBN Co monopoly

Comments on Henry Ergas “Regulate the regulators”, 15/04/2011, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/commentary/regulate-the-regulators/story-e6frgd0x-1226039354279

The stance of the ACCC on the issues of NBN monopoly and Telstra reflected a strong revengeful body as a result of its past experience dealing with Telstra, not too dissimilar to the government's.

It used its power to do so, but was probably abused its legal position and betrayed the public and particularly the shareholders of Telstra unfairly.

That has been very unfortunate for the ACCC and the nation.

In a sense, the whole drama showed the ACCC has not acted in the interest of the public and consumers by agreeing the NON Co. monopoly.

We've already heard the NBN Co. has used its legislated monopoly position to unfairly deal with a number of issues, including delays of construction of homes due to its requirement that have to be done in a particular way and its inability to have sufficient flexibility to empower other companies to meet technical standard with their won creativity to minimise costs.

How will the NON Co monopoly be better and not worse than Telstra’s dominant market position is an open question and anyone’s guess.

Under the current market conditions, other companies could build their own facilities to compete with Telstra in terms of infrastructure and market shares, such as those that have already been built fibre or hybrid ones to homes, e.g. TransacACTEWAGL lines in the ACT.

Under the NON Co monopoly, no one will be allowed to do so, in their words, for cheery picking!

How could the ACCC endorse such a poor arrangement, apart from its what the government has wanted to do.

Both government and its regulator ACCC should be fair and know what is fair

Comments on Stephen Bartholomeusz “Levelling Telstra's playing field”, 14/09/2009, http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Levelling-Telstras-playing-field-pd20090914-VV5KU?OpenDocument&src=sph

Both the government and the ACCC should not act as big brothers and ignore the economic reality.

They should not artificially change the underlying economics of its NBN versus Telstra's copper net through government regulations and destroy the value of the copper net.

The ACCC had always acted in an anti-economics manner, by artificially lower the price Telstra could charge. A consequence of that has been the lack of investment by the private sector on new a net, so the government has to step in and intervene.

The ACCC should learn how to regulate a monopoly so it does not abuse its market power, but the market will allocate the most appropriate resources to the sector as well.