Commerce Commission recommendation on broadband regulation accepted

The Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Steven Joyce, has accepted the Commerce Commission's 16 December 2010 Resale Service Report recommendations to remove resale regulation of retail broadband and data services, and resale regulation of bundled retail services.

“Regulation of these retail services has been scaled back because competitive service providers are now using regulated wholesale access services, such as bitstream, to provide their own retail broadband and data service offerings to end users throughout New Zealand,” says Mr Joyce.

The Commerce Commission investigation was prompted by a February 2009 request from Telecom that it consider changes to the regulation of resale services.

Under section 19 of the Telecommunications Act 2001 (the Act) the Minister is required to make the decision that best gives, or is likely to best give, effect to the purpose of Part 2 of the Act – that is, to promote competition for the long-term benefit of end-users of telecommunications services.

Mr Joyce says he considers that accepting the Commission's Resale Service Report recommendations and the subsequent clarification of the single service resale recommendation, meets this test.

Copies of the Commission's Resale Services Report and the Commission’s 14 April letter ‘Clarification of Resale Report’ can be downloaded from the Commerce Commission's website (www.comcom.govt.nz).