Liability allocation for telecommunication providers

Issued 9 December 2015
Release No. 67

Final decision on liability allocation for telecommunications providers

The Commerce Commission has released its final decision about how much 18 telecommunications providers will pay towards the $50 million Telecommunications Development Levy (TDL) for 2014/15.

The government uses the annual levy to pay for telecommunications infrastructure including the relay service for the deaf and hearing-impaired, broadband for rural areas, and improvements to the 111 emergency service.

The levy — about 1% of telecommunications services revenue — is paid by companies, or groups of companies, earning more than $10 million per year from operating a component of a public telecommunications network (fixed or wireless). Almost 90% of the contributions will be paid by Spark, Chorus and Vodafone.

The Commission has also released its 2014/15 final determination on the cost of the Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) operated by Sprint International New Zealand for the hearing and speech impaired. The Commission’s final calculation has determined that the cost for that period is $2.6 million and is unchanged from the draft decision. This sum is payable by the Crown out of the $50 million levy.

The 2014/15 levy final decision can be found here.

The 2014/15 TRS final cost decision can be found here.

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