A spokesperson for Shadow Minister for Regional services, territories and local government, Sue MacKay, told ZDNet Australia that Telstra missed its deadline to submit a database to the Senate committee which would allegedly reveal the details of a backlog of more than 20,000 telephone faults across Australia.
As a result, the Senate committee has imposed a strict deadline on Telstra through a -return to order", which the carrier -has to conform to". The database is to be submitted to the Senate on September 18, 2001.
-Telstra was supposed to hand its submission to the minister's office by Thursday, August 23, however the Senate received a letter saying there would be a delay as they have shut down the old database to migrate to a new system," the spokesperson said.
-We're a bit sceptical, we asked for the original database, not a new user-friendly database," the spokesperson added.
ZDNet Australia reported earlier this month that the Opposition party was investigating Telstra for allegedly neglecting its telephone network across Australia, which has led to a backlog of more than 20,000 telephone faults waiting to be repaired. Some of the faults are claimed to have been sitting unattended for around five years.
The investigation has come on the back of a leak to the Shadow Minister, which revealed a build-up of 3,500 faults in the Tasmanian region alone.
The spokesperson said the Opposition party has been asking for the E71 fault report database and a breakdown per region since February 2001.
According to the spokesperson, -Telstra are packing it".
-It has been a very long road. We are sceptical as to whether we will receive it, they have made it very hard for us," the spokesperson added
A Telstra spokesperson told ZDNet that whilst the carrier had hoped to provide the E71 database to the Minister's office on the proposed date, "getting the database free of the commercially sensitive information is not a simple task, particulary during a time when we have been devoting considerable resources to migrating to the new Total Order Management System (TOMS)".
Telstra is dragging their feet to make more money.