Our RSP incentives are a key means for Chorus to recognise and reward RSPs who are growing overall connections on the Chorus fibre network.

Whilst credits are accrued by getting new connections on the network, overall fibre growth is also dependent on minimising connections that are leaving the network.

We have attempted to recognise fibre growth at an RSP level with our ‘RSP Fibre growth’ condition and have experienced some challenges using this approach. One issue is that the “RSP net fibre growth” condition only recognises whether an individual RSP has grown its own fibre customer base – regardless of whether those are new connections or connections obtained from other RSPs. In this way it is not very aligned to Chorus’ overall objectives, or to the actual payment of credits which only accrue to new connections.

In addition, in our incentives consultation we have received feedback that any growth condition should not penalise RSPs that lose a customer where the customer remains on Chorus network. As a result, we are consulting on an alternative approach where we look at how each RSP contributes to overall network net growth/ churn.  

We are seeking feedback on the following proposed approach:

• Proposed approach would be a calculation of establishing a Net position from an RSP New Connection orders and Disconnection orders for a month
• This approach removes Transfer orders from the equation, so if an RSP loses a fibre connection to another RSP via a transfer order then there is no impact to incentive eligibility (and the same is true if an RSP gains a fibre connection from a transfer)
• If the difference is positive then an RSP will be eligible for incentives, if it is negative, an RSP will not be eligible for full incentive credits. Our current policy is to pay out RSPs a portion of the credits they would have received had they met the growth condition (currently 67%). We are reviewing the appropriateness of this partial payout in achieving our objectives and seek feedback on retaining this partial payment and on its level.

Feedback

We invite you to share your thoughts and feedback on this proposal by 21 November 2024. Your Customer Engagement team can provide you with detail of individual RSP performance over the last year using this approach, and how this would have affected your eligibility if it had been in place.

Please provide feedback using this online form or if you have any questions, please contact your Chorus Customer Engagement team.

We will advise outcome of this consultation towards the end of November for any change to be applied for incentive programme from January 2025.