Smaller telcos form competition advocate

Six smaller Australian telecoms companies have formed a new alliance aimed at advocating for policies to improve competition in the sector as the nbn rollout phase concludes.

The new alliance, Commpete, is calling for companies outside the top three in both fixed and mobile markets to increase their market share to 30% from the current 10% to 12%.

Commpete is the new iteration of the Competitive Carriers Coalition (CCC). The advocacy group wants to usher in an era where challenger companies can enter and thrive in new markets, and where flourishing wholesale markets are enabled by open customer access markets.

Founding members of Commpete are Amaysim, InABox, Macquarie Telecom, MNF Group (MyNetFone), MyRepublic and TasmaNet.

Commpete chair Michelle Lim said policymakers need to acknowledge that there is a problem with competition in the telecoms sector. “The simplest measure of this is that, for all the investment and disruption into the nbn, Telstra market share in broadband continues to sit stubbornly at 50% plus,” she said.

“There is often focus by competition policymakers and regulators on limiting concentration among the biggest companies in an industry, such as by preventing mergers among the top three or four companies. But too often the factors that advantage these big companies are not considered.”

Such factors include complex and restrictive contracts and pricing structures offered by nbn co and the lack of a requirement for mobile operators granted licences to valuable spectrum resources to support competition.

“This is the time to give Australians better choices if we want to leapfrog to a more dynamic market. We have spent all this time and money, not to mention the opportunity cost for Australia, yet have achieved precisely, in competition terms, nothing,” Lim said.

An effective competition policy would consequently drive down the cost of telecoms services for businesses and consumers while improving the quality of services, she concluded.

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