Labor says he is ‘dithering’. Turnbull wants the new licence to operate while the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) conducts an inquiry. The ACCC has said TPG’s plans are legal, but they need to be regulated.

“I am proposing to consult industry in coming weeks on a new telecommunications licence condition, which will apply to all carriers. Under existing arrangements, affected carriers must be consulted for at least 30 days prior to the new licence condition being finalised.

“The licence condition would require owners of high-speed networks affected by the ACCC's declaration process to functionally separate their wholesale operations, and to provide access to competing service providers on the same terms as it is provided to their own retail operations.”

The ACCC was acting on a complaint (most likely from NBN Co) that TPG’s plans would amount to ‘cherry picking’, and that it and other companies would then be able to skim off profitable broadband users and leave the government owned NBN with unprofitable areas that would need to be subsidised from the public purse.

The Opposition says Turnbull ishould immediately release NBN Co’s new Corporate Plan to add clarity to the cherry picking debate. Labor’s Deputy Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland. Writing in her blog, she says the Government is ‘dithering’ and that many questions remain unanswered.

“In a few days, it will be one year since TPG announced that it would cherry pick low-cost, high value apartments as part of its fibre-to-the-basement rollout. Other carriers have indicated that if TPG was allowed to proceed, they would follow suit.

“This threatens NBN Co’s ability to provide high speed broadband to all Australians, no matter where they live or do business. This problem has arisen because Malcolm Turnbull failed to properly consider the consequences of his broadband policy before the election. TPG announced its decision on 17 September 2013, just ten days after the election.”

She says that FTTB was no threat to Labor’s FTTP network, but it could compete with Malcolm Turnbull’s “cheaper second rate” network. An FTTB rollout also meant that TPG would have a monopoly on the buildings it selects, because two providers can’t both use the copper for vectored VDSL.

“Paralysed by ideology, Malcolm Turnbull flicked the hard decisions to the Vertigan Panel and the ACCC. Today the ACCC shrugged its shoulders, and the Vertigan Panel’s (delayed) suggestion is too slow to be practical.

“Finally, after a year of hoping the issue would go away, or be dealt with by the ACCC, today we have had some action from the Minister. But Turnbull’s move raises more questions than it answers.

“Will this be enough to deter cherry picking? How will Telstra respond in the context of the renegotiations of the Definitive Agreements? What exactly does ‘functional separation’ mean?”