Telstra said its first Network Reliability Framework report - delivered according to new federal government regulations effective 1 January 2003 - had revealed more than 99 percent of its residential and small business customers had experienced fault-free service in January.
However, ACA member Allan Horsley said in a statement that while the service availability for most customers was high, "there were a number of regions that needed to be watched.
"The ACA will be looking for trends in the data in Telstra's monthly reports that indicate whether there are persistent reliability issues, particularly in those regional areas that have experienced higher than average fault incidences and fault repair times," Horsley said.
The ACA said Telstra's report revealed that nationally, 99.13 percent of the carrier's services were fault-free - meaning around nine of every 1,000 services had one or more faults during the month.
"At a regional level, the percentage of fault-free services varied between 99.82 per cent for the Brisbane City and Technology region and 96.98 per cent for the Northern Territory Top End region.
"On average nationally during January, services were available 99.94 per cent of the time.
"The regions where services were most available were the Melbourne City and Dedicated Services and Brisbane City and Technology areas - both recording 99.99 percent - with the New England area of New South Wales recording the lowest availability, at 99.77 percent".
Telstra's group managing director of infrastructure services, Michael Rocca, said the results were good considering portions of the carrier's network had been destroyed by fire in that period.
