Steve Botica introduced our speaker Steve Riceman.
Steve looks after the new area around fibre and the wholesale side of the fibre services. He works with a multidisciplinary team consisting of legal, economics, and industry people.
The UFB Project (ultra Fast Broadband) was funded to deliver fibre across NZ. With a 10 year timeframe, the project kicked off in Dec 2011, aiming to achieve a 75% coverage across NZ.
In 2017 UFB 2 was to extend to provide 86% coverage of NZ by the end of 2022.
Fibre access is actually relatively more competitive than electricity lines, as wireless access is an option to compete against fibre (whereas there are not options like this for the delivery of electricity).
However, consumers still need some protection from providers. And that's where Steve and the team come in.
The Commission sets the ground rules, with Determinations, Regulations for the sector. To define these, the team consulted with suppliers, stakeholders, community, etc. And they adapted the proposed approach. The work was completed at the end of 2020.
The team has now moved into focusing on the fibre price vs. quality part of the process.
Only Chorus is subject to the price quality regulation (where the Commerce Commission sets the maximum allowable revenue). The other smaller providers are subject to information disclosure. So they have freedom to set pricing, but they have to divulge information, which helps keep everyone informed of what they are doing, and acts as a deterrent to setting unfair prices or low quality. The suppliers will be required to establish and meet some specific quality measures for the services that they provide.
There were many questions from members and Steve was thanked by Steve Botica for a most interesting talk.
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