The Minister for Communications has directed the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to impose new rules that will force telcos to significantly improve the consumer experience in moving to the NBN. This is a great win for consumers.
The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) has been calling for some time for these issues to be addressed and are very pleased with the Minister for Communications’ and the ACMA’s announcements.
The experience of migrating to the NBN has shone a light on the inadequacies of the current regulatory framework to support the delivery of essential telecommunications services. Once in place these new rules will ensure that the regulator has better tools to ensure practices of telco providers improve.
It’s been a busy week, with the Government also releasing its response to the Productivity Commission’s report on the Universal Service Obligation (USO). ACCAN is pleased to see that the Government has acknowledged that existing arrangements are out of date and in need of reform, and welcomes the Government’s commitment to provide universal access to voice and broadband services through a new Universal Service Guarantee (USG) and look forward to working with the Government on this in 2018 and beyond.
Finally, the ACCC has announced that TPG will compensate nearly 8,000 customers who were misled about maximum speeds they could achieve on certain TPG NBN plans. This follows similar announcements by the ACCC about Telstra and Optus compensating customers for the same issue.
Read ACCAN’s blog post for more information on who may be affected by this latest announcement.