COMPETITION AND CONSUMER ACT 2010 

Extension of the declaration expiry date under section s152ALA(4) – Wholesale line rental – 2024

1. Pursuant to section 152ALA(4) of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (the Act), the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission extends the expiry date for the Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) declaration to 30 June 2029.

Note: the previous expiry date was 30 June 2024.

2.      The WLR is described in Annexure 1 to this instrument.

………………………………………….

Anna Brakey

Commissioner

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission

Dated: 26  March 2024

Annexure 1: Service description for the WLR

The Wholesale Line Rental service is a line rental telephone service which allows an end-user to connect to a carrier or carriage service provider’s public switched telephone network, and provides the end-user with:

(a)    an ability to make and receive any 3.1khz bandwidth calls (subject to any conditions that might apply to particular types of calls), including, but not limited to, local calls, national and international long distance calls; and

(b)    a telephone number

however, the wholesale line rental service does not include services where the connectivity between the end-user and the carrier or carriage service provider’s network is provided in whole or in part by means of a Layer 2 bitstream service that is supplied by an NBN corporation.

Definitions

Where words or phrases used in this declaration are defined in the Act or the Telecommunications Act 1997, they have the same meaning given in the relevant Act.

In this Appendix:

Layer 2 bitstream service has the same meaning as in the Telecommunications Act 1997;

NBN corporation has the same meaning as in the National Broadband Network Companies Act 2011;

public switched telephone network is a telephone network accessible by the public providing switching and transmission facilities utilising analogue and digital technologies.