ISPs urged to influence telecom act

Internet service providers must find creative and effective ways to influence the workings of the Telecommunications Act or they could miss out on tens of millions of dollars in potential revenue, says a legal observer.

Wellington lawyer Michael Wigley is giving the internet community his unsolicited advice in a paper posted on his wigleylaw.com site.

There could also be significant costs, particularly if the growth of voice-over-internet protocol (Voip) means internet service providers (ISPs) have to cough up money under the telecommunications services obligation mechanism, which subsidises Telecom for supplying telephone services to customers who are commercially unviable, he says.

The work of the regulator appointed under the act is dominated by TelstraClear and Telecom, says Wigley.

Although the commissioner's decisions will affect ISPs and internet users, those parties have a limited voice because of the cost and complexity of getting involved.

"The work of the telecommunications commissioner is moving rapidly to an increasing internet/data focus, beyond voice telephony," he says.

Under the Telecommunications Act, "access seekers" can ask for a determination from the Commerce Commission for the supply of service from an "access provider" - usually Telecom.

The commission can determine the terms of service and the price to be paid.

TelstraClear has gone down that track, but despite the consequential delays in launching services, most other ISPs negotiate a commercial deal with Telecom, which means they cannot later ask the commission to step in.

The Government last year accepted the commission's recommendation that Telecom's phone wire network not be unbundled. This means competitors continue to be denied the right to sell a complete service on the network.

What they did get was an unbundled bit-stream (UBS) wholesale version of Telecom's ADSL service, with a minimum downstream speed of 256 kilobytes a second and a maximum upstream speed of 128kb.

The regulated service is not "real time", which means it cannot handle Voip.

Wigley says smaller ISPs had little option but to accept the UBS deal on Telecom's "take-it-or-leave-it" terms because they could not afford the money or time required to go the commission route.

www.wigleylaw.com