Lack of Public Input Makes Regulatory Holiday Worse
InternetNZ: Lack of Public Input Makes Regulatory Holiday Worse
Media Release – 14 March 2011
InternetNZ (Internet New Zealand Inc) today releases the submission it made to Parliament on the Telecommunications (TSO, Broadband and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, with a strong call for the law to require consultation on key policy decisions and a stronger obligation on fibre investors to abide by the new regulatory framework.
InternetNZ Chief Executive Vikram Kumar says “This Bill and the associated supplementary order paper (SOP) leave huge decisions down to unilateral choices, either by Ministers or by Telecom.
“Transparency is a much better approach. Whether it is signing up undertakings with new fibre companies or working out how Telecom should structurally separate, the law needs to make sure that scrutiny is a reality before final decisions are made”.
The call for transparency requirements is a key part of InternetNZ’s submission.
“As we have said before, InternetNZ very strongly opposes the regulatory holiday provisions of this Bill. That won’t come as a surprise.
“What has surprised us is that the benefit being given to investors through this holiday is not matched by obligations to follow the regulatory framework.
“As drafted, if a local fibre company is consistently in breach of its undertakings, it is at no risk of losing its regulatory holiday. It simply faces fines that it could dismiss as a cost of doing business – far smaller penalties than Telecom faces today if it breaches operational separation rules.
“That is simply wrong. If the Select Committee chooses to keep the flawed regulatory holiday at all, it has to ensure that the other aspects of the regulatory framework have teeth.
“The Commerce Commission should be able to apply to the courts to end undertakings that are being flagrantly and repetitively breached. Today this can only happen by agreement of the company breaching them.
“The consequence of such a termination should be a restoration of full Commission regulatory control.
“The Bill contains other provisions that are equally concerning. As worded it does not entrench high quality open access for fibre networks. It fails to require fibre network owners to publish accurate and timely financial information. The TSO provisions appear to create a power for the Minister to spend funds from the new Telecommunications Development Levy on almost anything he likes.
“InternetNZ’s submission suggests fixes for most of these issues, and we will be strongly urging the Select Committee to adopt them.
“This submission will be matched later this week with a further submission that deals with the massive step-change to New Zealand’s telco legal framework set out in the Supplementary Order Paper the Government released last month.
“That SOP is even more important than this Bill, and we have only had four weeks to try and unpick it.
“We will release that supplementary submission on Wednesday morning, and it will contain very strong advice that the path this legislation is treading is directly contradictory to the public interest,” Vikram Kumar says.
The submission is online at http://tinyurl.com/6btdwhx or can be found on InternetNZ’s website directly via www.internetnz.net.nz
ENDS