TPG Telecom has asked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to prevent NBN Co from increasing its prices every year until 2032. In a submission, TPG argued that the current special access undertaking (SAU) draft provided too much leeway for NBN Co to make material changes to pricing.
The company said that if NBN Co’s revenue targets were not tracking to expectations, it would have significant incentives to increase prices at the product level to remedy any revenue shortfalls. TPG Telecom argued that prices should only be allowed to be discounted or decreased during a regulatory cycle, which covers a period of three-to-five years, and not be allowed to increase unilaterally on an annual basis.
The company stated that this constraint needs to be in place until at least 2032, at which point the ACCC would undertake a review of the SAU. TPG argued that this structural constraint would encourage innovation as NBN Co would need to find other ways to increase revenue, such as upselling to existing customers, on-boarding end-users who have not used NBN, or by continuing to innovate on the product side.