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Preventing Unexpectedly High Bills: Credit Management in Telecommunications

On 13 April 2004, the Government directed the Australian Communications Authority (ACA) to, among other things, investigate and report within six months on: 

1. actions taken by carriage service providers (CSPs), either individually or through the Australian Communications Industry Forum (ACIF) or other bodies, to address 'Internet dumping';
2. the appropriateness of a service provider determination requiring CSPs who provide international call services to bar access to certain international numbers or to a class or range of international numbers used to provide premium services; and
3. credit management measures the telecommunications industry has in place, or is developing, to address the problem of unexpected high bills, the nature of industry plans to implement credit management measures and implementation timetables, the adequacy of the actions and commitment of the industry to implement credit management measures, and any regulatory action that may be appropriate.

The ACA consulted publicly on the issues raised above via a discussion paper released on 4 August 2004. The ACA received 15 submissions on the discussion paper.

The ACA submitted its final report Preventing Unexpectedly High Bills: Credit Management in Telecommunications to the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts on 19 October 2004.

The Minister invited public comment on the conclusions and recommendations of the ACA. While comments will be considered on any aspect of the report, comments were welcomed, in particular, on the following suggestions and recommendations of the ACA:

• the ratings of effectiveness of credit management tools given in Table 2 on pages 47 and 48 of the report be adopted;
• the minimum performance levels at the bottom of page 48 of the report be adopted; and
• detailed specification of requirements for implementation of the framework via a service provider determination, with an option open to carriage service providers to prepare individual implementation plans which are approved by the regulator, would be the most appropriate regulatory mechanism for achieving improvement in credit management practices.

The closing date for comments on the report was Friday 1st April 2005.

In total, 11 submissions were received, of which two were commercial-in-confidence.

The nine public submissions are available below:

Australian Competition & Consumer Commission submission - Preventing unexpected high bills (File size: 221Kb)
Australian Communications Industry Forum submission - Preventing unexpected high bills (File size: 105Kb)
Australian Consumers' Association submission - Preventing unexpected high bills (File size: 425Kb)
Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association submission - Preventing unexpected high bills (File size: 271Kb)  
Banking and Financial Services Ombudsman Limited - Preventing unexpected high bills (File size: 330Kb)
Interactive Data Services submission - Preventing unexpected high bills (File size: 201Kb)
Optus submission - Preventing Unexpected High Bills (File size: 83Kb)
TIO submission - unexpected high bills - march 2005 (File size: 94Kb)
Telstra submission - Preventing Unexpected High Bills (File size: 293Kb)

The Department is considering the submissions, and will shortly make its recommendations to the Minister.

Contact
Ms Nikki Vajrabukka
Telecommunications Consumer Policy, DCITA
Tel: 02 6271 1625
Email: credit-management@dcita.gov.au

• Document ID: 21757 |
• Last modified: 6 February 2008, 11:04am