SoylentNews

janrinok writes:

News of a possible cut in broadband fees to cheer up our Australian members:

A bunch of Australian fixed telephony and broadband users are about to suffer under a regime of lower prices.

In spite of communications minister Malcolm Turnbull's 2014 assertion that lower prices are against consumer's interests, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has told Telstra to cut its wholesale fixed network access prices. The decision calls for across-the-board fixed network wholesale price cuts of 9.6 per cent.

The draft decision sets prices for seven access services from October this year until 30 June 2019. Those wholesale services include fixed line telephony and wholesale access to Telstra's copper for broadband access – for example, the “naked” copper that competitive ISPs connect to their own DSL equipment for customer access. A key point of the ACCC's reasoning is that Telstra customers shouldn't be footing the bill for NBN migration. The incumbent had argued that it would suffer higher per-customer costs as users were moved to the NBN wholesale network, even if they remained as Telstra retail customers.

“Our draft decision is that assets that become redundant as a result of migration will be removed from the asset base. Also, users of the copper network will not pay the higher prices that result from the loss of scale efficiencies as the number of services remaining on the copper network falls,” ACCC commissioner Rod Sims explained in today's announcement. The current decision is still a draft, with the regulator soliciting further submissions, and it's a certainty that Telstra will at least be trying to reverse the price cut, even if it gives up its attempt at increasing prices.