Commerce Commission presses on with UPC work

1.00pm

Despite Telecom and TelstraClear reaching an agreement for the supply of unbundled partial circuit (UPC) services, the Commerce Commission will continue to work on what it thinks users should pay for the services.

UPCs are links that Telecom rents to competitors enabling them to extend high speed data services to corporate and medium enterprise customers beyond the reach of their networks.

The commission today released a draft "benchmarking" report on UPCs for public consultation.

It said the report related to Telecom's commitment last month to introduce cost-based pricing for the UPC service by 30 September 2004.

The commission said despite last week's announcement of the Telecom-TelstraClear deal, it was continuing with the process set out in Telecom's commitment.

"The completed benchmark report will assist the commission in assessing whether Telecom will be making the UPC service available at cost-based prices and in assessing whether there are reasonable grounds to investigate the merits or otherwise of regulating access to Telecom's fixed public data network under Schedule 3 of the Telecommunications Act 2001," the commission said in a statement.

- NZPA