Australia's communications regulator plans to take a more aggressive stance to ensure contracts offered to consumers by telecommunications companies are fair, including taking recalcitrant carriers to court if they fail to comply with a yet-to-be-developed industry code of conduct.

The Australian Communications Authority said today the telecommunications industry had failed to fully comply with guidelines on consumer contracts developed by the Australian Communications Industry Forum, forcing the ACA to ask the industry to develop a more formal code of practice.

ACA acting chairman, Dr Bob Horton, said in a statement the ACA had asked the Australian Communications Industry Forum to develop the new code and submit it for registration within 180 days. Dr Horton said a review of the guideline on consumer contracts, conducted by the Communications Law Centre in September 2003, had yielded "disappointing" results.

"The results ... show there is a need for significant improvement in the contractual environment for consumers.

"In light of these results, the ACA is satisfied that the development of a code is necessary to provide appropriate safeguards in this regard.

"The ACA is also satisfied that it is unlikely that a voluntary industry code would be developed within a reasonable period in the absence of a formal request.

"Contracts are the cornerstone of the consumer relationship with suppliers and it is important the terms are transparent, fair and unambiguous".

The ACA's acting deputy chairman, Allan Horsley, told ZDNet Australia   the review entailed the CLC adopting the position of a consumer and requesting contracts for services such as mobile telephony and Internet delivery from various telecommunications industry players. The CLC found "there were some improvements, but also some room for improvement," he said.

Areas of deficiency included cancellation charges levied when a user wished to shift to another provider at the conclusion of their contract, Horsley said.

There were no provisions for enforcing guidelines, he said, whereas the registration of an industry code incorporated a two stage enforcement process; firstly, issuing a directive to a signatory to a code to comply with its provisions and, if that failed, taking them to the Federal Court.

"We don't want to micromanage, but we want to make sure the contracts are fair to consumers," he said.

The ACA will spend money to get some advice on what constitutes a model contract to aid the process.

It plans to make the CLC report public next week.

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