NBN Co performance reporting to be tightened

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission wants input into a record-keeping rule (RKR) covering NBN Co's network performance and service quality.

The competition regulator said the RKR is being developed both for NBN Co, and with an eye to a similar rule for competitors covered by its 2016 superfast broadband access service declaration.

An RKR would provide “greater public transparency of NBN service quality, along with improved operational reporting between NBN Co and retailers, will improve outcomes for end-users over time and reduce overall costs relating to the management of faults and outages”, the ACCC said in its consultation paper [pdf].

“The aspects of service quality and network performance that we propose be covered by an
RKR relate to connections, faults and dropouts, appointments, network outages and speed
performance, rebates due to not meeting service levels, and corrective action taken by NBN Co," the ACCC said.

The consultation also asks at what subscriber level such an RKR should also apply to competitive broadband infrastructure providers.

Retailers have a long-standing beef about NBN Co's performance.

Earlier this year, in a submission to the ACCC's Special Access Undertaking inquiry, Telstra complained about “planned outages” on NBN Co's network, and an alleged failure by NBN Co to meet service level targets such as 10-day resolution.

NBN Co is proposing to include minimum service standards in a revision of its special access undertaking - also currently before the ACCC - for the first time.

Prior to this, service standards were included only in the wholesale broadband agreement (WBA), a commercial contract with internet providers, details of which were largely unpublished.