TELSTRA'S biggest competitor has accused it of "gaming" the regulator after the country's biggest telco lodged its first appeal to the Australian Competition Tribunal.

Telstra lodged the appeal through its lawyers Mallesons on January 11 following the rejection of its access pricing for the national copper phone network by the competition regulator last December.
Telstra public relations chief Andrew Maiden said the appeal was aimed at proving Telstra's long-held belief that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had consistently undervalued its network.

The appeal is part of a two-pronged strategy by Telstra to try and supersede the ACCC's rejection of its pricing for competitors to access its raw copper wires.

The ACT appeal concerns Telstra's line sharing service (LSS) where its competitors rent the high-frequency part of a copper line to supply their own broadband services. With LSS, Telstra retains the low-frequency part of the line to provide voice services.

 
Telstra said there were less than 100,000 LSS services in use and some rivals believed this number might be considerably lower. On its main copper wire access service - the unbundled local loop (ULL) - competitors offer both broadband and voice. Telstra has lodged new ULL pricing for review with the ACCC based on national, rather than geographical, rates.

Telstra's biggest competitor, Optus - along with a number of other rivals - has already lodged a complaint over Telstra's ULL pricing with the ACCC.

Optus regulatory chief Paul Fletcher said: "What we have seen is that clearly over summer Telstra has been working on turning the regulatory gaming wheel. It seems they have a strategy of trying to game the regulator.

"Appealing the undertaking (pricing) on line sharing, even though it is not a widely used service, is designed to use up the regulator's resources."

But Mr Maiden said: "Telstra has long believed the ACCC underestimates the cost of providing infrastructure in Australia. But the ACCC has called its past decisions 'interim', which has deprived Telstra of the opportunity to test them in court.

"This decision is one of the first to be called a 'final' decision, so it's our first opportunity to test our long-held view that the ACCC undervalues the Telstra network."

The move by Telstra to appeal an ACCC decision for the first time, underscores the more combative approach to regulation under chief executive Sol Trujillo who has been in charge of the company for seven months.