ACCC welcomes milestone in industry cooperation

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has welcomed the recent draft Australian Communications Industry Forum Report addressing some of the industry's current commercial churn and billing problems, and sees it as a positive step.

'This is a clear sign that self-regulation processes in the telecommunications industry are capable of resolving these types of issues,' Mr Rod Shogren, the ACCC Commissioner responsible for telecommunications, said today. Commercial 'churn' is the way Telstra transfers customers to competitors who resell local and other telecommunications services.

When the transfer process was initially introduced, the ACCC received several complaints from Telstra's competitors regarding the customer transfer conditions unilaterally imposed by Telstra. The complainants alleged that the customer transfer conditions are so unattractive that most competitors have chosen not to offer a local call resale service or have limited the introduction of such services.

In particular, the allegations have focused on the transfer fees, liability for pre-transfer debt, the complexity of the transfer form that customers are required to complete and the processing times. The draft report sets out a number of practical steps and processes for addressing some of these problems which the ACCC understands are to be implemented during the next three months. In the meantime the ACCC is finalising its investigation into whether Telstra's introduction of the customer transfer conditions involved a contravention of the competition rule*.

This investigation has involved extensive market inquiries. In addition the ACCC has required Telstra to provide information relevant to the investigation. 'While the ACIF report deals with some aspects of the customer transfer process, it does not address the issue of the transfer fees or liability for pre-transfer debt.' Telstra has advised the ACCC that the transfer fees are cost based but that Telstra is in the process of reviewing these costs.

The ACCC understands that Telstra anticipates finalising this review within the next couple of weeks. 'The ACCC sees this review as timely, considering that the current customer transfer process has now been in place for some time.'

*The competition rule prohibits a telecommunications carrier from engaging in anticompetitive conduct.