KISS

This morning the Commerce Commission released the wholesale price Chorus is allowed to charge to Internet service providers (ISPs), and which therefore is the core component of the retail prices those ISPs charge you for your fixed line broadband.

It's made up of two parts, the first being the bit for the cost of the copper line from your place to a Chorus switch (the 'local loop' or UCLL) and the second ('UBA') being the cost of the fancy electronics that Chorus can (optionally) provide to ISPs to save them having to use their own. The local loop bit will be $28.22 a month and the UBA bit will be $10.17 a month, making a total of $38.39. This compared with the previous price allowed, of $44.98.

These prices are based on explicit, detailed and complex modelling of the costs involved, and are intended to replace the interim hold-the-fort prices that the Commission had previously set, based on the cost of the same services overseas in countries who do things much the same way as we do. This 'benchmarking' exercise had set a local loop price of $23.52 and a UBA price of $10.92, making a total of $34.44.

There are all sorts of issues involved here, big and small, affecting everything from the profitability of  Chorus through to uptake of the country's shiny new ultra fast fibre network. And they directly affect you, too: already some ISPs are saying that the drop in the wholesale price (from $44.98 to $38.39) had already been passed on to you, so you won't be getting any further joy out of it.
In any event, I'd like to pick on one small aspect of the process, even though it's largely moot now, and it's about those interim 'benchmarked' prices.

I think they did a good job of providing a quick, cheap and reasonably accurate initial estimate of the eventual wholesale price. They were pretty much spot-on when it came to the UBA part ($10.92 versus $10.17), which is remarkable given that everyone was agreed that the benchmarking process had only a couple of countries overseas to use as sighting shots. And they weren't far off when it came to the local loop component, either ($23.52 versus $28.22) - especially when you consider that the fully modelled cost estimate involves a whole swathe of judgement calls made by the Commission and its modellers, and is not a glimpse into some eternal truth held in the mind of an omniscient Being.

So I'd take two lessons away from this, both involving the KISS principle.

The first is that over the next couple of years we're going to be taking a close look at the shape of our telco regulatory regime, and I'd like to suggest that we keep the cheap and cheerful benchmarking process. It's relatively fast - a particularly important consideration in fast moving markets like ICT - it's relatively transparent, it's understandable, it's relatively cheap, and it's accurate within some rough-and-ready-justice tolerance. I'd go further, and make it harder for parties to invoke the full cost modelling approach, which introduces layers of cost, delay and complexity, and all for a gain in 'accuracy' that (because of multiple modelling options) may be more illusory than real. And in general I'd like to see the 'good enough' option chosen over the one that keeps consultancies on three continents in business.

The second is that we need to think harder about the increasing complexity and cost of regulation across all sectors, and not just the telco business. I agree with Eric Crampton of the NZ Initiative, when he said on Interest.co.nz that "Too much of New Zealand’s regulatory apparatus would suit a country of forty million rather than the one we have". He's got his own examples: one I came across recently was the Commerce Commission's needing to sign off a $3 million increase in capex spending on a little Transpower project in South Canterbury. The process will take five months from start to finish, and has already spawned a 54 page initial draft decision.

That's a bit of an extreme example, and I should make it clear that it's not the Commerce Commission's fault: it's been lumbered with this ludicrously over-engineered regulatory regime. And I should add that from next April the Commission won't have to get out of bed for anything under $20 million - which is, of course, where the threshold for its involvement should have been in the first place (if not higher again). And I'd have to note that bloodymindedness on the part of Transpower and its customers drew this intrusive regime on their own heads, and a bit of enlightened give and take could have avoided the whole mess.

But it's there now, and it's holding up the sector, and its cousins in other sectors are also increasingly clunky and costly. It's time for more people in the policy analyst community to do what the MD of one company I know used to do: hold up the sign that says, "Does it make the boat go faster?"