The TIO reports to the council, which consists of five consumer representatives, five industry representatives and one independant member.
Darren Worley, managing director of Ideal Internet, has been nominated for the carrier representative position on the council. He wants to get the council to "clean up" what he says are unfair policies.
"I want to throw out the current constitution because it's full of holes. It's unfair, unethical and unjust to the industry which it purports to represent," he told ZDNet Australia .
Worley says the TIO is overstepping its mark. He doesn't like the way the it can influence his business, and the businesses of other members.
"Previously the TIO was not allowed to interfere with how an ISP or carrier bills their services to their customers. Now it is getting involved in things that are not in its jurisdiction," he said.
That's not to say he doesn't see a role for the TIO.
"I wholeheartedly believe in what the TIO is set up to do. Providing information and a complaints resolution process to the industry is a wonderful thing," he said.
But Worley says the TIO's option to bill its members -- who, by law, must join -- when it needs to raise money, is unfair. He calls it the "open cheque" policy.
For his part, the TIO himself, John Pinnock, says that type of fund raising has only happened once -- when One.Tel went under.
"We've done that precisely once in the last five years and we did it when One.Tel bit the dust. If we didn't do it, there could have been a real danger that the TIO would be trading [while insolvent]," he told ZDNet Australia .
Other areas Worley would like to see changes are in the billing of members for complaints that prove, in the end, to be bogus. However Pinnock says that's the only way to make the complaints process fair.
"If a member knows that the cost to them depends on the outcome of the complaint then they'll fight [it] tooth and nail," he said.
Most ISPs are just annoyed about having to be members in the first place because they have to pay membership fees based on complaints made against them, he says.
"In the history of the expanded scheme... they have made a number of attempts to get out from under it as it were," Pinnock said. "What they're rallying against is not merely the TIO but the parliament. The parliament has said that Internet service providers must be members of the scheme".
The ballots for the election will go out either today or tomorrow, according to the TIO returning officer and company secretary Phillip Carruthers.
He confirmed Worley's nomination went through despite some industry rumblings that he should not be nominated for the carrier position because he is the managing director of an ISP, and not a carrier.
One reason he has accepted the nomination as a carrier representative and not as an ISP representative is that he didn't want to draw votes away from current council member Mark Russell, of Independent Service Providers.
Worley is up against 10 others, including Gerald Miller from iPrimus, Mark Graubner from Leading Edge Communication, which took over failed ISP Just Internet, and current council member Robyn Ziino of AAPT.
Unlike the TIO board elections, in which votes are awarded to members in accordance to their financial contribution, the council elections are determined on a vote-by-vote basis by members only.
And how is the TIO fair when you get a $1000 bill for doing absolutly nothign wrong?