The national carrier has been blamed for the death of 10-year-old Sam Boulding last week, who suffered a fatal asthma attack at a time when the family's phone was out of order. The family was unable to call an ambulance or seek medical assistance over the phone.
Federal minister for communications, Senator Richard Alston, demanded the Australian Communications Authority (ACA) conduct an immediate investigation into the incident.
The ACA, which released its terms of reference for the investigation today, said it was seeking--amongst other things--to establish whether the provision and maintenance of telephone services to the Boulding family was an -isolated incident" or signs of something -systematically wrong" at Telstra.
-Essentially we want to establish the circumstances of the matter in the first place, in terms of the user and the service provided to the user," ACA acting chairman, Dr Bob Horton told ZDNet Australia.
Horton said its investigation, carried out by independent auditor KPMG, will look into the obligations associated with the service, such as the provision of access to emergency services, time to repair services and the Customer Service Guarantee.
"There's a lot to look at in terms of the obligations that Telstra has needed to meet in provision of the service," Horton said, adding that the investigation would seek to expose what exactly was not met and why.
The inquiry will scrutinise what--of the incumbent carrier's internal systems, field services arrangements and administrative procedures-- went wrong, Horton said.
The ACA, which hopes to have its investigation wrapped up within two weeks, will report directly to Senator Alston.
Meanwhile, Telstra has launched its own investigation into the incident, to be carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The investigation should be completed this week.
Who's Alston again?
Doesn't he have someting to do with IT in Australia or was that just a rumour?
When is the minister going to take action instead of just talking about it?
Rob