New Zealand: Competition regulator confirms review of telecoms regulations

New Zealand’s competition enforcement and regulatory agency, The Commerce Commission, has now confirmed it will go ahead with an investigation into whether the resale voice services provided by the country’s largest telco, Spark, should be deregulated.

The Commission confirmed its decision on Thursday after completion of its five-yearly review of Schedule 1 of the Telecommunications Act 2001. The commission had released its draft preliminary finding in April, flagging that there were “reasonable grounds” to investigate removing Spark’s resale services.

Spark’s resale voice services have enabled retail service providers (RSPs) to offer retail fixed-line phone services without having to invest in their own infrastructure, with the services originally introduced with the Act in 2001 and subsequently amended in 2011.

Telecommunications commissioner Dr Stephen Gale said the Commission considered it was appropriate to take a closer look at deregulation of Spark’s services in light of “emerging competition from other wholesale alternatives”.

“As signalled in our draft decision, we believe Spark faces increased competition from other wholesale alternatives such as ultra-fast broadband and Chorus’ baseband services, which enable RSPs to provide retail voice services to consumers. Having considered submissions, in our view the time is right to investigate deregulation further.”

Full Content: ItWire

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