::Welcome to October's edition of Communicate

:: New Members

:: New Members

Communications Alliance is pleased to welcome the following new member:

 
Brix Networks
www.brixnet.com
Brix Networks offers a number of converged service assurance solutions that address the specific VoIP, IPTV, and VPN management needs of carriers, cable MSOs, managed service providers, large enterprises and mobile operators.

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:: Responding to TIO challenge for industry to improve customer service

Communications Alliance has responded to the challenge for our industry to address customer service issues raised in the latest annual report of the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) released on November 7.

Communications Alliance Roundtables in Sydney (Nov 27) and Melbourne (Nov 28) will give members the opportunity to review the TIO report as well as the recent ACMA Annual Report and identify issues for priority industry responses.

Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Deirdre O’Donnell said: “At the TIO we get to reflect to the industry what customers are complaining about, and they’re complaining about poor customer service. I’ve put out a challenge to the industry over the year ahead to respond to the data the TIO has put on the table about customer service and complaint handling”.

Communications Alliance CEO Anne Hurley said customers needed to have confidence that their concerns were being heard and acted on by their service providers.  Therefore the industry needed to digest the information in the TIO and ACMA reports and respond appropriately by working collaboratively with each other, the TIO and ACMA.

“There is ample research that bad customer service is bad for business,” Ms Hurley said.  “The costs for providers can include not only customer churn and lost revenue, but also costs of complaints handling by the TIO and increased staff to deal with customer service issues.  The cost benefit of implementing good customer service and complaint handling processes exceeds the costs of not doing so. “

Ms Hurley urged members to register for attendance at the upcoming roundtables, which would be especially valuable for customer service people, credit management staff and call centre managers.

She said that although the TIO report highlighted some areas that needed priority attention, it also showed how progress had been made in areas that had been addressed successfully by the industry through the cooperative efforts of service providers, Communications Alliance and the TIO over the past year.

Some key TIO findings were that:
• Complaints increased by 16.9 per cent over the previous year, with the fastest rate of increase from internet services, followed by mobile and landline services;
• Complaints about billing and payments, including direct debits and capped and bundled phone plans, were a source of concern for all consumers;
• Under the landline category, complaint issues about privacy dropped by almost half (47 per cent);
• Complaint issues about landline contracts increased by more than a third (36.9 per cent), reflecting a move to the bundling of telecommunications services;
• Customer service accounted for about 17 per cent of complaint issues to the TIO. The leading sources for concern under this category included service providers failing to act on a customer’s request, giving incorrect or inadequate advice or not being able to be contacted.

Positive results included:
• A 13.4% fall in credit management complaint issues. Contributing factors included some companies introducing spending alerts for customers, and the introduction of the financial hardship provisions of the Credit Management Code developed by Communications Alliance;
• 93% of complaints were resolved by service providers without further recourse to the TIO, the highest percentage for the last three years;
• 97.3% of complaints about mobile premium services were also resolved by service providers, which is the lowest escalation rate for any service type under the TIO’s jurisdiction;
• The static level of confirmed breaches of Communications Alliance codes and the comparatively low level of code complaints compared to the increasing number of telecommunications services and subscribers signify a positive future for customer service and complaint handling in Australia.

Further information about the Communications Alliance roundtables will be available on the website www.commsalliance.com.au shortly.

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:: Opportunity for a Higher Level Vision on Australia's Broadband Future
By Anne Hurley, CEO, Communications Alliance

The following is the substance of a Media Release issued by Communications Alliance on 5 November 2007.

Election offers the chance for a more holistic view of broadband world
Communications Alliance urges participants in the election campaign to take a more holistic view of Australia’s broadband future.

The new parliamentary term will provide the opportunity to put in place a broadband framework that recognises the changed realities created by the convergence of telecommunications, broadcasting and information technology.

Australia is on the verge of a new era in which broadband technologies are dramatically changing the way that information is transmitted, used and consumed.  We therefore can no longer restrict our thinking and our planning to fit into the old legislative and regulatory silos that were developed for a time when telcos delivered all of our communications services, media companies just produced television, radio, newspapers or magazines and computer companies just sold boxes that sat on the desktop.

The boundaries between all of the players have been rapidly dissolving and we need our decision makers to work with the industry to devise a vision for the future that prepares Australia for the broadband world of converged technologies, networks and services.

It is encouraging to see so much public discussion about broadband but it is disappointing at a time of such exciting potential that political debate is almost entirely about various models for building network infrastructure.

Infrastructure is important but we need to broaden the debate, we need commitment to the creation of the right environment for facilitating growth, innovation and competition so that customers can reap the full benefits of broadband services.

In order to create that environment our leaders must understand the need to consult with all of the stakeholders to agree on a vision for our broadband future.  Government would then be able to develop a comprehensive framework of legislative and administrative measures that are purpose-built for the broadband world, not bolted on to the legacy tools of the pre-digital age.

The development of the broadband framework should be driven by agreed policy principles.  Some preliminary suggestions for those policy principles could include:

• Technological neutrality;
• Open and transparent;
• Deregulation – less regulation and more industry self-regulation;
• Removal of barriers to industry development;
• National economic growth and social well-being;
• Long-term interests of end-users;
• Promoting and preserving a competitive market environment;
• Facilitating efficient investment for industry/national economic growth and policy outcomes;
• Fostering the development of innovative services;
• International competitiveness.

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:: Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment Act 2007: Industry Information Session
By Margaret Fleming, Program Manager, Communications Alliance

Communications Alliance recently hosted an industry information session regarding the commencement of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment Act 2007. The session was addressed by representatives from the Attorney-General's Department.

The Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment Act 2007 (the Amendment Act) received the Royal Assent on Friday 28 September. Schedule 1 to the Amendment Act which transfers the provisions from the Telecommunications Act 1997 to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 commenced on 1 November 2007.

The session covered the amendments which will commence on the date of Assent (contained in Schedule 2 of the Bill), but focused mainly on the new requirements arising out of Schedule 1, including:

• the new processes for the access to telecommunications data (on either an historical or prospective basis);
• new administrative measures which will need to be in place relating to the authorisations of telecommunications data, as well as notifications, revocations of authorisations and other measures;
• new reporting requirements introduced by the Bill; and
• the transfer of provisions relating to industry co-operation.

Key features on the Amendment Act
 
Commencement
The two main amendments concerning the industry in Schedule 2 to the Amendment Act, which commenced on Royal Assent being 28 September 2007, are:
 
• the extension of the definition of 'serious offence' to all child pornography offences, regardless of the period of imprisonment, and
• the ability of carriers to delegate the function of providing evidentiary certificates in relation to interception warrants to any employee of the carrier.
 
Schedule 1 to the Amendment Act, which contains all the main amendments relating to the transfer of provisions from the Telecommunications Act to the TIA Act commenced on Thursday 1 November 2007.  The relevant provisions of the Telecommunications Act will be repealed from the same date.  There is no grace period for these amendments, meaning that section 282 or 283 requests made on or after 1 November 2007 will be invalid.  However, any section 282 or 283 certificates that were issued prior to 1 November that have not been executed may be executed on or after 1 November.
 
Effect of amendments
The immediate effect of these amendments will be that requests for access to historical data will no longer be made under sections 282 or 283 of the Telecommunications Act, but rather under section 175 (ASIO), 178 or 179 (enforcement agencies) of the TIA Act.  Prospective access to telecommunications data will also be permitted for ASIO in connection with its functions (section 177) or for criminal law-enforcement agencies for offences punishable by at least three years imprisonment (section 180). 

The amendments also bring the provisions relating to industry obligations to assist agencies into the TIA Act.  
For reference, a copy of the Amendment Act is at  www.comlaw.gov.au/ComLaw/Legislation/Act1.nsf/0/C7531B6062786938CA25736A0012EB53?OpenDocument

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:: Maintaining voice frequency performance standards
By Mike Johns, Project Manager, Communications Alliance

A customer equipment Standard that could be attributed with the status of a ‘classic’ in the Australian telecommunications industry has been to be released for public comment. The AS/ACIF S004: 2006 Voice frequency performance requirements for Customer Equipment, whose ancestry goes back to the days of Telecom Australia, is currently being revised by Communications Alliance.

This Standard provides the requirements and test methods for customer equipment that transmits and receives voice communication, voice messages or tones over Australian telecommunications networks. Its main role is to ensure that the frequency and loudness characteristics are adequate for our telephone conversations. Safety aspects are also covered, including minimising the possibility of acoustic shock and the unwanted howling of handsets. This Standard is used for both the analogue or ‘traditional’ networks (such as the Public Switched Telephone Network or PSTN) and digital networks, including IP or VoIP Telephony and it is the latter that the revision focuses on.

Being able to hold a conversation over a digital telecommunications network (for example using a VoIP service) is possible due to software in the telephone that converts speech into digital signals by software known as a ‘codec’ (which literally codes and decodes the conversation into the right format for transmission over the network). In addition, this software improves the efficiency by compressing these signals to reduce the amount of information that has to be sent.

One of the aims of this revision is to ensure that the requirements do not restrict the choice or quality of codecs used in customer equipment, thereby avoiding any potentially adverse impacts on innovation. The revision recognises that the codec specified by the ITU G.711 Recommendation (known as the ‘G.711 codec’) provides the basis for a good quality end-to-end voice performance providing a good benchmark for codec quality. Other codecs of varying quality can provide satisfactory (or better) end-to-end voice performance. G.711 is the default codec Standard for the PSTN which underpins the existing level of integrity of voice calls on the PSTN. The revised Standard strikes a balance between specifying minimum requirements, encouraging recommended approaches and at the same time allowing industry to deliver innovative solutions in our telecommunications products.

The draft Standard DR AS/ACIF S004: 2007 Voice frequency performance requirements for Customer Equipment released for public comment this month and is available at www.commsalliance.com.au/documents/public_comment .

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:: Testing Quality of Service for VoIP - Part 1
By James Duck, Project Manager, Communications Alliance

As a follow on from last month’s article on the new Guideline on Quality of Service (QoS) for Voice over IP (VoIP), this month looks at some aspects of a related document under development in Communications Alliance.  It provides suggested testing arrangements for QoS on VoIP services that service providers can use for the purposes of transmission planning, design verification, ongoing network monitoring, and to inform end-users.

This document on testing for VoIP QoS provides information on three different types of testing.  The first is an upfront quality assessment test.  This is undertaken before a service is made available and could be more oriented to the planning and design phases of rolling out a service.

The second is an operational quality assessment test.  This is undertaken when services are in operation, and may be part of an ongoing quality control process.  It might be used in system wide testing.  The third type of test is a fault condition test.  This could take place when a fault is reported and involve diagnostic procedures to aid any fault resolution processes.

The testing guideline also presents five transport scenario(s) because the reality of existing, traditional voice services and IP based voice services means there is a number of possible combinations for transport of a voice service.  Each scenario will have different characteristics that might affect the voice quality and its testing.  The simplest is the “Pure IP” scenario, with transport all the way on an IP based infrastructure.

The second and third scenarios are variants of interconnecting PSTN or ISDN type networks with IP based networks via a gateway.  One has a single IP based endpoint, the other has two IP endpoints bridged by the PSTN.

The fourth is connecting a VoIP service to a mobile service via the PSTN.  This is a separate scenario to the second scenario because mobile networks have unique characteristics such as the use of a different codec and, by definition, an airpath in the access network that can lead to variable performance.
Finally the fifth scenario is connecting two VoIP service providers that are operating independently of the underlying broadband connections.  This could be a variant on the first scenario of “Pure IP” with the variation being the separation of service provision from the underlying network(s), which has implications for testing processes.

Next month will continue this look at testing arrangements for VoIP QoS.  A group of industry experts in a Working Committee at Communications Alliance has been finalising the guideline that this article draws on.  Please contact Communications Alliance if you want to be notified of publication of the VoIP QoS Guideline or the related testing Guideline.

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:: Content Services Act 2007: Information Session
By Jeni Floyd, Compliance Manager, Communications Alliance

Communications Alliance will be hosting an industry Information Session on Wednesday 14 November in Sydney, on the status of work to implement the requirements of the Communications Legislation Amendment (Content Services) Act 2007 (Content Services Act).

This information session is for industry stakeholders who fall within the following categories:

• Mobile Carriage Service Providers
• Content Service Providers
• Content Aggregators
• Content Developers
• Hosting, Links, and/or Live Content Service Providers; and
• Commercial Content Service Providers.

The Content Services Act creates a new Schedule 7 to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (BSA), which replaces the current online content regulatory framework in Schedule 5 to the BSA.  The Content Services Act requires Code development to address each of the above sections of the industry.

The forum affords a significant opportunity for stakeholders to learn about the development of the Internet Industry Association’s draft Content Services Code and revision to the Mobile Premium Services Industry Scheme [MPSIS].  There will also be a question and answer time.

As with all Communications Alliance events and activities, the objective is to facilitate productive information provision and dialogue amongst industry members who share the commitment to find industry solutions for industry issues.

Further information and to register:  www.commsalliance.com.au/Events/Content_Services .

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:: Calendar

Events 2007

• Content Services Code Information Session : 14 November 2007, Sydney – FOR SUPPLIERS ONLY 
• TIO & ACMA Annual Reports’ Review: 27 November 2007, Sydney – FOR MEMBERS ONLY
• TIO & ACMA Annual Reports’ Review: 28 November 2007, Melbourne – FOR MEMBERS ONLY

• Information Economy Christmas Events
 Cost: $50 for single ticket or 3 tickets for the special price of $99 (inc. GST)
 To register, visit www.slatteryit.com.au/xmas07  or call 02 9423 8850

ITs* in Brisbane: Monday 26th November, 2007 5.30pm - 8.30pm
City Gardens Cafe, Alice Street, Brisbane City Botanical Gardens, Brisbane

ITs* in Sydney: Tuesday 27th November, 2007 5.30pm - 8.30pm
Verandah Restaurant, 55-65 Elizabeth Street, Sydney

ITs* in Melbourne: Wednesday 28th November, 2007 5.30pm - 8.30pm
Curve Bar, The Arts Centre, 100 St Kilda Road, Melbourne

ITs* in Adelaide : Thursday 29th November, 2007 5.30pm - 8.30pm
First, Richmond Hotel, 128 Rundle Mall

Codes/Guidelines published in October 2007

• Telecommunications Consumer Protections (TCP) Industry Code: C628:2007
• Telecommunications Consumer Protections (TCP) Industry Guideline: G631:2007
• Quality of Service parameters for networks using the Internet Protocol Industry Guideline:
  G632:2007
• Quality of Service parameters for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services Industry Guideline:
 G634:2007

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:: About Communications Alliance

Communications Alliance was formed to provide a unified voice for the Australian communications industry and to lead it into the next generation of converging networks, technologies and services.

Communications Alliance offers a forum for the industry to make coherent and constructive contributions to policy development and debate.

By providing leadership on new trends and directions, Communications Alliance fulfils a vital unifying role on behalf of the industry and its members, particularly in areas of competition, innovation and industry development.

The prime mission of Communications Alliance is to promote the growth of the Australian communications industry and the protection of consumer interests by fostering the highest standards of business ethics and behaviour through industry self-governance.

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