The Welfare Costs of the Australian Telecommunications Pricing Structure.

Australian telecommunications pricing has developed in an environment that is uncompetitive, subject to pressures to cross-subsidize, and insufficiently cognizant of relevant costs and demands. STD and local call charges are too high and access charges too low. Compared with a structure that charged marginal usage costs and retrieved costs of subscribers' loops and overheads through access charges, the pricing structure has an estimated efficiency cost of about T0 million in 1985-86. Copyright 1988 by The Economic Society of Australia.