Section 64 of the Telecommunications Act 2001 requires the Commission to investigate whether or not following service should be regulated:
• Access to the unbundled elements of Telecom's local loop network; and
• Access to the unbundled elements of, and interconnection with, Telecom's fixed Public Data Network.
The Commission commenced its investigations on 10 April 2003 with the publication of an Issues Paper. Submissions on the Issues Paper are available in this section. On 4 September 2003, the Commission commenced an additional investigation under Schedule 3 of the Act into certain aspects of unbundling. The Commission published its draft report on both investigations on 18 September 2003. On 14 October 2003, the Commission released an amended draft report to include amendments to certain input figures in the cost-benefit analysis.
The Commission held a conference on the draft report on 10-14 November 2003, transcripts and papers from this conference are available in this section.
On 22 December 2003, the Commission submitted its final report to the Minister of Communications.
On 19 May 2004, the Minister announced his decision to accept the recommendations contained in the Commission's final report. All official papers, including Ministry advice and relevant Cabinet papers, related to the Minister's decision can be found on the Ministry of Economic Development's website at http://www.med.govt.nz/pbt/telecom/llu-investigation/index.html#min
On 4 August 2004, the Commission released a draft price benchmarking report prepared by Covec Limited on Telecom's Unbundled Partial Circuit (UPC) Service. This report relates to Telecom's commitment provided to the Commission on 25 June 2004 that Telecom would provide cost-based pricing for the UPC service by 30 September 2004. The Commission released its final UPC benchmarking report on 3 September 2004.