The new program will begin -almost immediately" and will monitor Telstra's provisioning and faults management operations to ensure that the company's wholesale customers are getting the same level of service as Telstra Retail, according to spokesperson for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Lin Enright.
This follows an ACCC investigation last year in relation to a number of complaints alleging discriminatory behaviour by Telstra to its wholesale customers. The investigation suggested that end users serviced by Telstra's wholesale customers may not be receiving the same standard of service as Telstra Retail's customers, particularly in respect of the time taken to repair faults.
-From our experience of complaints received, there has been problems with communication," Enright told ZDNet Australia.
In a statement, ACCC Chairman, Professor Alan Fels, said: "Although no case of discriminatory behaviour by Telstra in the delivery of its provisioning services to other providers has been established to date, our inquiries have revealed a lack of transparency and communication with wholesale customers in the provisioning process."
According to Enright, the monitoring program is designed to require Telstra to be more open in its communications, especially in notifying wholesale customers of the status of orders in the provisioning process. However, she declined to outline any penalties Telstra will face for non-compliance.
-At this stage we're working in cooperation with Telstra, it's to both Telstra's and the customers benefit," she said.
Telstra is unconcerned by the added scrutiny of the ACCC. "Telstra Wholesale fully agrees with the ACCC that there is no discrimination in our service and provisions," said the chief of commercial operations for Telstra Wholesale, Deena Shiff. "We have already commmenced implementation of a program that will increase transparency and communication into the provisioning process."
"Mere monitoring of the situation is not good enough. Telstra Wholesale is already working jointly with our customers to ensure that the entire end-to-end process achieves optimal outcomes for both provisioning and fault management," she said.
haha what a joke , its the resellers that are the problem, the wholesalers sell service level agreements with shorter times than they buy from telstra and the reselers customers get anoyed
the enquiry was started by aapt, has anyone tried to get a fault fixed with aapt !!!