News
What are we going to do about Netflix?
The ACCC is forcing Google and Facebook to negotiate with Australian news publishers for content. Is there a parallel with streaming services like Netflix and Australian internet service providers (ISPs)? I don’t think so.
Read it here What are we going to do about Netflix?
Who will blink first on NBN pricing?
The showdown on NBN CVC pricing has been a long time coming. The NBN bestowed an extra 40% of CVC capacity to make lockdown due to COVID-19 more bearable. But it is only temporary. The ending of the 40% uplift inserts a decisive event into what was previously a slow boil. At a time when retail margins are becoming exhausted, something has to give.
Co-authored with Bob James and publishedin Comms Day. read it here Who will blink first on NBN pricing
Asset valuation for access pricing
The valuation of assets is probably the most important decision regulators will face for a network business dominated by fixed costs because depreciation and the return to capital derived from this valuation will account for well over half of total costs.
In some recent work for Fiji, there was some debate about whether assets should be based on ‘actual’ or ‘replacement’ costs. As the following report shows, my view is that both theory and practice support the use of replacement costs. Asset valuation-revised-1
Pricing in Abundance
There Is not much more that I can say about Australian National Broadband Network (NBN) pricing. But recently I had the good fortune to apply the principles of traffic pricing – which I have been urging for the NBN since 2009 – to the new submarine cable for the Solomon Islands. It provides an example of why pricing for abundance is better than pricing to reflect, or worse, to create scarcity. Economuse 2020-02-12
2019 Review of retail broadband pricing
This is probably the last review using the method developed and used since 2008. More importantly, retail and NBN pricing are pulling in different directions. While I have a lot of issues with CVCs, abolishing them is not the answer.