Be Prepared: Meek Weak on Australian Matters

26 August 2008 – Sydney, Australia – Telstra will roll out another hired gun to talk about competition and regulation in the Australian telecommunications sector this week. But scratch beneath the surface of the ‘factual analysis’ Telstra’s expert presents and you will find little more than false assumptions and bias.

The former chairman of UK regulator Ofcom, Kip Meek will be in Canberra on Wednesday to discuss a report titled ‘Operational Separation in Australia and the UK’, that he was commissioned to write by Telstra. The report unsurprisingly concurs with Telstra’s own views that structural separation is unnecessary in Australia.

It follows the Telstra party line because the analysis is drawn exclusively from information provided by Telstra – with no input from its wholesale customers or competitors.

“It would appear Mr Meek has fallen into the same trap as another Telstra commissioned mouth piece, Professor Martin Cave,” a T4 spokesman said.

“If Mr Meek were interested in presenting a true picture of competition and regulation in the Australian market he would have talked to any number of Telstra’s wholesale customers, local industry bodies or stakeholders,” he said. “Without this information, his analysis is fundamentally flawed.”

Mr Meek does include a qualification at the beginning of his report about the scope of the research. This will no doubt be glossed over by Telstra this week:

“This report has been written on the basis of a week-long trip to Australia, an interview programme with Telstra executives and an extensive review of the documentation associated with regulatory issues and approaches in Australia and the UK.”

The ‘documentation’ Mr Meek refers to is in fact Telstra’s own operational separation compliance report.

It goes on:

“While the evidence I have seen has suggested very strongly that the issues of non-price discrimination do not have the salience they had in the UK in 2004, I have not discussed the issue with (for example) Telstra’s wholesale customers and my report has to be read in this context.” (Italics added)

Challenge Meek’s Weak Arguments

Mr Meek will no doubt tow the Telstra party line during his speaking engagements this week. In the face of the obvious bias of his research, following are five questions to ask Mr Meek in an attempt to gain a more balanced view of the local market and regulatory landscape:

1. Are you aware that the Australian regulator, the ACCC, has said that operational separation in Australia has not worked, and that it has investigated several instances of Telstra discrimination in contradiction to the intention of the operational separation principles, without being able to stop it?

2. Are you aware that there are more disputes between Telstra and its competitors before the courts and the ACCC than ever before, and that these disputes centre on price and non-price discrimination issues?

3. How much has Telstra paid you for your report and visits to Australia? Why do you think it would do that, and why in those circumstances would you not seek to speak to competitors before drawing conclusions about Telstra treatment of its competitors?

4. When you were running Ofcom, if an Australian consultant for BT came to you with a report that said there was no competition problem in the UK, but admitted he had never spoken to competitors, would you have taken him seriously?

5. The Australian Government proposes to provide $4.7 Billion of taxpayer funding to assist the roll-out of a National Broadband Network. This network will face limited infrastructure based competition. In these circumstances, do you think Telstra’s proposal that such a network should face a much lighter form of regulation than we have today is appropriate?

- Ends -

About Tell the Truth Telstra:

The Tell the Truth Telstra (T4) campaign was launched in April 2007, to counter Telstra’s campaign of misinformation on telecommunications and broadband competition and regulation in Australia.

Tell the Truth Telstra is an initiative of Australia’s leading telecommunications carriers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) including AAPT, Adam Internet, Austar, iiNet, Internode, Macquarie Telecom, Optus, Primus Telecom, Telarus, TransACT, Unwired, WestNet and the Competitive Carriers’ Coalition.

The Tell the Truth Telstra (T4) initiative commenced with a united complaint to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) asking it to investigate whether Telstra’s conduct amounts to misleading and deceptive conduct.

The Tell the Truth Telstra (T4) initiative documents a list of Telstra’s myths and highlights their misleading nature. An accompanying education program includes an information kit for MPs, a public Web site, and a series of information sessions for MPs, exposing the truth behind Telstra’s attempt to gain relief from regulation.

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