An ever-growing pile of complaints has led the ACCC to announce a public inquiry into the standard of the NBN’s wholesale service.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims says customers are continually complaining about slow activations and responses to faults, as well as issues with dispute resolution and compensation.

“They're issues that up until now have been left to commercial negotiation between the NBN and its wholesale customers — Telstra, Optus etc,” he told reporters.

“We've now formed the view that that's not working appropriately.”

Complaints about the NBN have surged by almost 160 per cent over the past financial year.

A recent parliamentary inquiry called for a drastic overhaul of the NBN.

Mr Sims said one problem is that NBN pricing is regulated, but service standards are not.

“We need to adopt a more normal regulatory approach and regulate some of those service standards,” he said.

The ACCC has called for public submissions to be prepared.

 “One of the main focuses of our inquiry will be whether there are appropriate incentives for NBN Co to remedy service failures, along with the adequacy of compensation available to wholesale customers, to ensure consumers in turn are provided appropriate redress when things go wrong,” Mr Sims said.

“While our inquiry will focus on NBN wholesale service levels, we will examine them in the context of the supply chain. We are also concerned that some service levels at the retail level are not enforceable. If we identify other changes to aspects of the supply chain that will improve customer experiences on the NBN, we will certainly highlight them.

“The ACCC will liaise closely with the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) as our inquiry proceeds. ACMA is also considering supply chain issues to determine how they affect outcomes at the retail level, and has gained very useful survey data that we will tap into,” Mr Sims said.

The ACCC will release a consultation paper next month to examine these issues and seek views on whether an access determination is necessary.

More information is available here.