Aust politicians spar over telco fault findings - News - Communications

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Aust politicians spar over telco fault findings

By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
June 30, 2003
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Aust-politicians-spar-over-telco-fault-findings/0,130061791,120275843,00.htm

The federal government has attempted to put a positive spin on the dismal results of the latest Telecommunications Performance Monitoring Bulletin, but the Opposition has been quick to seize on the bad news.

The Australian Communications Authority has released figures showing a seven percent reduction in fault repair performance, a figure that is two percent below that of 12 months ago. Senator Richard Alston, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts said the figure was the result of a 'glitch' in fault repair performance in urban areas, which "marred an otherwise solid quality of service performance for the March 2003 quarter".

"Telstra was also able to maintain its CSG [customer service guarantee] fault clearance at or above 90 percent in regional Australia," said Senator Alston, quick to point out improvements in rural service ahead of plans to sell the remainder of Telstra. "In rural areas, Telstra fixed faults within the CSG timeframes on 90 percent of occasions, while in remote areas it fixed faults within the CSG timeframes in 92 percent of instances."

The ACA report said a combination of seasonal factors, such as bushfires and storms, and the effects of the pilot introduction of a new work management system in various states, had a direct impact on Telstra's fault repair and new connection performance.

Lindsay Tanner, the Shadow Minister for Communications, has different ideas as to the reason behind the slump in performance.

"Attributing this decline in performance to bushfires and storms, as Telstra does, is only part of the story," he said. "The missing component is the steady reduction in Telstra staff and investment, which makes the network more susceptible to faults while providing fewer resources for them to be fixed."

"Storms and bushfires are hardly unprecedented in Australia. Telstra has shed 13,000 workers over the past four years, and its capital expenditure has fallen from a peak of AU$4.5 billion to AU$3.2 billion for 2002-03," said Tanner.

Senator Alston said he had written to Telstra CEO Ziggy Switkowski to "confirm the importance of the need to take any corrective action". Alston also wrote to the chairman of the ACA asking whether further action would be needed to ensure that this aspect of Telstra's performance is turned around as soon as possible.