The ACCC has this evening announced that it has ‘declared’ Telstra wholesale ADSL services under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.

The effect of the ACCC’s decision will be that Telstra’s wholesale customers will now be able to better compete with Telstra’s retail product offering.

The declaration is an interim access determination (which applies for the next 12 months) pending the completion of the ACCC’s final access determination.

The ACCC have announced the following pricing under the interim access determination:

Interim prices for wholesale ADSL services

Monthly charge per end-user in Zone 1(predominantly CBD and metropolitan areas)

$25.40

Monthly charge per end-user in Zone 2/3(predominantly regional and rural areas)

$30.80

Monthly charge per Aggregating Virtual Circuit or Virtual LAN acquired in connection with wholesale ADSL

To 30 June 2012: $45.50 per Mbps

From 1 July 2012: $33.65 per Mbps

An industry source claims that:

“the declared ADSL2+ price of $25.40 is just $1.40 per month more than the entry level NBN service of 12/1 Mbit/s. Given that the average speed amongst our customer base for an ADSL2+ service is around 12/1 Mbit/s, ADSL2+ delivers similar speeds with a fraction of the price with respect to aggregation as the AGVC price is only a few dollars more than NBN and there are only a handful of interconnection points rather than 121. The copper ADSL2+ network delivers hands down better value for consumers than the $48B white elephant that is NBN.“.