Issue No 9: 7 May 2018

www.acomms.com.au/nominations.php

Visit the 2017 ACOMMS photo gallery here and highlights video here. And see the 2017 winners here.

NBN FTTB/N, FTTC and Parallel Migration Processes Industry Guideline

Communications Alliance has published a NBN FTTB/N, FTTC and Parallel Migration Processes (G659:2018) Industry Guideline.

G659:2018 NBN FTTB/N Migration and Parallel Migration Processes (the Guideline) has been developed as a replacement document to IGN008.

The objectives of this Guideline build on those already developed in IGN008, while also providing guidance to industry and stakeholders in relation to the Migration and Parallel Migration to NBN services, in order to maximise the Customer experience when migrating and to avoid Customer double billing. New clauses have been developed to:

(a) specify operational principles and provide for Parallel Migration and Single Step Migration;
(b) provide a Restoration process where an associated Legacy Service is invalidly Disconnected; and
(c) reflect nbn’s introduction of FTTC access technology.

The Guideline can be downloaded from the Communications Alliance website.

Industry Recommends Improved Complaint Handling Rules

Communications Alliance has proposed a set of improvements to proposed new regulatory rules on the handling of consumer complaints about telecommunications services.

The industry proposals on the new rules – which have been drafted by the industry regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) in response to a Direction from the Federal Government – are designed to focus resources on resolving complaints for customers by reducing unnecessary additional cost and prescription.

Industry has publicly supported the efforts of the Minister for Communications and the Arts to improve the customer experience in the telco sector.

After a five-year period of falling complaint volumes, the recent increases in complaint numbers across a range of product areas have been very disappointing for customers, service providers and regulators alike.

In its submission to the ACMA, Industry welcomed the ACMA plan to change the current Chapter 8 of the Industry Telecommunications Consumer Protections Code to a Standard.

“Industry developed these rules, and we welcome the ACMA taking steps to increase the level of industry compliance,” said Communications Alliance CEO John Stanton.

“However, the new Record Keeping Rules (RKRs) proposed by the ACMA will not provide meaningful comparative information for consumers, will be extremely costly to implement, and will not, in our view, contribute to the improvement of the consumer experience – neither for services supplied using the NBN, nor for other services.

“Worse, the proposed RKRs will lead to providers diverting customer service resources away from addressing complaints, with no clear benefit to consumers.

“We have suggested, as an alternative, expanding the existing Complaints in Context report to provide consumers with comparable and unbiased data on complaints, without the huge additional cost of the RKRs – a cost that will ultimately be borne by consumers,” Stanton said.