News - Monday, September 26, 2011 17:58 - 6 Comments

Telstra again threatens to cancel NBN deal

news Telstra has reportedly threatened to walk away from its $11 billion deal with the Federal Government and the National Broadband Network Company, with its pricing and access arrangements with other smaller telcos again becoming the sticking point with the potential to scuttle the landmark contract.

According to a little-reported article published in the Advertiser newspaper in Adelaide on 16 September, Telstra chief executive David Thodey (pictured, above) told a group of shareholders in Perth that week that the telco could withdraw its support for the NBN deal if it couldn’t win Australian Competition and Consumer Commission approval for its plan to structurally separate its operations and provide wholesale services to competitors in the meantime.

Telstra filed two documents with the ACCC on 1 August, the Structural Separation Undertaking and the Migration plan. The pair will will guide in the separation of the company’s wholesale and retail divisions, with its copper network to be shut down and customers migrated onto the NBN over the next decade. In addition, they set out how Telstra will fairly deal with its wholesale customers (many of whom are also competitors) in the interim period.

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