[LINK] PC report on the USO Inquiry is out

[Narelle]

On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 10:33 AM, David Boxall <linkdb at boxall.name> wrote:
> On 19/06/2017 2:07 PM, Narelle wrote:
>>
>> Happy reading!
>>
>> http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/telecommunications/report
>> ...

NB the word "happy" was not meant to indicate a state of pleasure in
the use above... rather a reference to the size of the report...

> Why is our government trying to kill us? :/ They should be replacing
> existing copper with fibre, then extending the network. Instead, they've
> allowed existing land lines to be neglected and now they want to take them
> out entirely.

It's important to note that the Productivity Commission is not "our
government". The report (from my reading so far of the 432 pages) is
very much an economic view of the USO. It doesn't run to the sort of
society we want to be. It does point to a number of inefficiencies in
a range of regulation and policy objectives which are reasonable. As
they say, it is a report "to government" not "by government".

Eg it is a fact that the USO is outdated, and everyone is locked in to
an "opaque" contract with Telstra for some $253m pa just to provide
the USO voice service. Meanwhile we have an NBN under construction
that lacks obligations to provide a broader range of services. So you
get new housing developments without any service at all as NBN will be
there, so Telstra won't be...

And the ICPA is totally right - if the PC recommendations are
implemented alone, then the 90,000 (probably higher IMO) will not get
satisfactory voice services especially after the copper continuity
guarantees disappear.

So that means obligations on NBN need to be beefed up... and we need
performance benchmarks... and consumer safeguards that work...


> MEDIA RELEASE June 22, 2017 Productivity Commission Fails Rural and Remote
> ICPA AUST - ISOLATED CHILDREN'S PARENTS' ASSOCIATION·THURSDAY, 22 JUNE 2017
>
> The Isolated Children's Parents Association is extremely disappointed that
> the final Report by the Productivity Commission into the Telecommunications
> USO has failed to address the importance of a fixed landline for many
> residents in rural Australia.
>
> If the report's recommendations are accepted by the Federal Government,
> rural Australians who live in the nbn satellite footprint and rely on a
> fixed landline as their principal means of communication, could be forced
> onto a sub-standard service. A voice service over satellite internet could
> be the only alternative for these families and would be severely compromised
> by poor weather, power outages and latency issues.



-- 


Narelle
narellec at gmail.com