The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today published a final determination made in the arbitration of a dispute over access to the Line Sharing Service (LSS). The LSS, declared on 30 August 2002, allows two carriers to provide separate services over a single metallic pair or line. The final determination specifies certain of the terms on which Telstra supplies the LSS to Chime Communications.The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today published a final determination made in the arbitration of a dispute over access to the Line Sharing Service.

The final determination specifies certain of the terms on which Telstra supplies the LSS to Chime Communications. These are LSS rental charges, and the terms on which wholesale ADSL services are migrated to the LSS. This follows the parties being unable to agree on them, and Chime notifying the dispute for ACCC arbitration.

The ACCC has specified a LSS rental charge of $2.50 per service per month, and has reduced the charges and timeframes to migrate in bulk wholesale ADSL services to the LSS. The specified charges are to apply for the period from 1 June 2004 until 31 December 2007.

The charges result from applying the ACCC's long-standing pricing principles for the LSS (August 2002) and, in respect of LSS rental charges, the ruling of the Australian Competition Tribunal (June 2006).

Telstra proposed in previous regulatory proceedings an LSS rental charge of $9 per service per month, which was opposed by access seekers, and considered not to be reasonable by both the ACCC (December 2005) and the Australian Competition Tribunal (June 2006). Despite these rulings, Telstra continued to require access seekers to pay a $9 per month charge.

A key issue in this arbitration was whether a contribution to the costs of the line over which the LSS is supplied should be included in the LSS rental charges to apply until 31 December 2007. The ACCC decided against doing so. The ACCC has for some time recognised that economic efficiency could be enhanced by the inclusion of an appropriate contribution to line costs in LSS rental charges. However, where line rental charges fully recover line costs, the inclusion of such a contribution in LSS rental charges would lead to an over-recovery of network cost. In these circumstances, reductions in charges for other network services, such as wholesale line rental, are needed in order to avoid any such 'double dipping'.