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Vodafone lobs grenade at Telstra

Vodafone Australia has lobbed a grenade in the telco war, questioning Telstra's dominance in the telecommunications sector and labelling it detrimental to the public.

In a submission to the completion policy review, Vodafone accused Telstra of keeping prices abnormally high in Australia, saying its dominance of the network is harming competition.

"Telstra (operates) the most profitable telecommunications business in the OECD, to the detriment of Australian businesses, consumers and overall economic productivity and welfare," the submission said.

"Australian telecommunications markets remain highly concentrated by global standards.

"(There is) virtually no effective fixed and mobile competition exists in regional Australia: This is of significant benefit to Telstra, positively reinforcing Telstra's enduring, pervasive, and unprecedented market dominance."

The company said it did not telcos given "a handout", but instead called for a "reinvigorated competition regime" in the form of a high-powered competition policy review and development entity.

"It is our view that policy makers and regulators in Australia have tolerated a telecommunications market where the incumbent has been protected from effective competition.," the company said.

"A high-powered competition policy review and development entity should be created to independently advise the various state and Commonwealth governments and to formally review all regulation against competition principles,"

Meanwhile, The Sydney Morning Herald has reported the cause of the widespread network outages in Vodafone's network on Thursday resulted from a faulty cable, called a "repeater" in Bullabulling, south-west of Kalgoorlie.

Vodafone offered free data across Australia over the weekend as an apology for the event.

However some WA users were calling for compensation in the form of discounted bills.