access pricing
The NBN legacy – Rising prices and falling global rankings
Remember when the NBN was going to bring Australia a feast of fast and affordable broadband? Then how is it that Australia is 82rd in the world and falling ever further behind? And how is it that broadband bills keep rising in Australia while falling around the world?
Bob James and I have written many times over more than a decade about the failings the structure and level of NBN pricing. The time seemed right to remind people of why we are in the present situation. See The NBN Legacy_Final
Pricing submarine cable for development
This is a talk I gave in Vanuatu and again (with some small changes) to the Submarine Networks World conference in Singapore on 8 September 2022.
It discusses how traffic pricing can increase cable utilisation and contrasts the different experiences of PNG and the Solomon Islands nearly two years after the beginning of service on the Coral Sea Cable in February 2020.
Universal Service and Competition
In both Australia and the Cook Islands the impact of infrastructure competition on mandated geographically uniform pricing is being (or proposed to be) addressed with a levy. The different approaches to measuring costs and setting the levy are contrasted.
The paper proposes that a universal service levy has to be coupled with consistent access pricing to have efficient competition consistent with universal service policy. Interconnection between networks is free in the Cook Islands but the pricing of resold wholesale services should be consistent with the aims of the levy; to ensure universal service and efficient competition.
This the preprint http://deridder.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Universal-service-and-competition-.pdf
The final paper appears in the AJTDE Volume 9, Issue 3 at https://doi.org/10.18080/jtde.v9n3.437