Australian broadband may breach WTO rules
Australia and Europe’s technical regulation with regard to broadband transmission may be in breach of World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, says the US-based Current Group.
According to a report in CommsDay by Grahame Lynch, Australia has a technical regulation that “effectively ban[s] the use of broadband over power lines”, which poses a trade barrier for organisations providing that technology.
The regulations require that emissions using power mains must remain below a certain threshold, “well below that which is required to produce a commercially viable signal,” according to Current.
Due to power line broadband technology being the only communications technology that operates through power mains, the technical limits adopted by Australia “are designed to prohibit only [those] products from being used in competition with established telecommunications media,” Current claimed, concluding that Australia has breached its WTO obligations.
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