Month: November 2007

TIO annual report

The Telecommunication Industry Ombudsman’s 2007 annual report is a less than proud moment for the Internet industry.

The headline is an 84% increase in complaints about ISP behaviour. But this is only part of the story, the details are even more disturbing.

The most notable jump was in complaints about excess data charges. This is only going to get worse as more people start using VoIP and downloading videos. It’s exacerbated by the swing towards ISPs counting uploads and downloads towards their download limits.

One item that jumps out of the report is the confirmation ISPs don’t keep proper records of conversations with customers. While the TIO points at smaller providers our experience is the bigger providers are not better.

The biggest increase was complaints about debt collection procedures where customers have been listed as defaulting on an Internet bill without any notice from the ISP. This probably relates to a couple of sizable and incompetent ISPs going broke late last year.

As we saw with the One.Tel liquidation, the record keeping of these companies is disgraceful and it’s highly unlikely they can prove any debt when challenged. Not that this stops them trying to recover what they claim is owed.

In the category of customer service, ISPs were by far the worst performer. The biggest category of complaint was inadequate or incorrect advice. This is barely surprising

Direct debit problems continue. Part of the problem here is with the banks who consider direct debit requests to be more important than their customers. The TIO points out this a breach of banking code of conduct.

Given ISPs can’t get their billing right and don’t give records it does appear that giving a direct debit authorisation to them is a risky thing to do.

This report is a wake up call to ISP and the entire IT industry. Things have to improve. Some of the areas we need to look at are;

  • better training
  • improved record keeping
  • proper QA and procedures, especially for escalating customer complaints
  • clearer and more concise bills

The silly thing is all of these would have positive return for ISPs. By providing better information to customers and staff, they will reduce costs and probably improve sales.

The broadband explosion

For a typical exciting Sunday afternoon, I’ve been trolling through the Telstra annual report.

One statistic that leaps out at me is the growth in consumer broadband subscribers of nearly 60%, even if we assume all the 373,000 customers who ditched their dial up plans went over to broadband, that’s still a whopping 35% growth in customers.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the nine month growth in consumer broadband connections from June 2006 to March 2007 (not quite the same period) was 46%.

The decline in dial up connection was 26% over the nine months, as opposed to Telstra’s decline of 36.3% over the twelve months.

Interestingly, Telstra’s dial up decline would have been greater if their systems allow customers to transfer their existing dial up email address to broadband. As it stands, they have to retain their dial up account and we steer customers to Bigpond’s Casual User Plan as a cheap way of doing this.

So Telstra’s performance isn’t out of the line with the industry. What it does show is the massive take up of broadband. It’s also profitable, as Telstra’s report also shows their income has grown by over 66%.

Over the next few weeks I’ll have a look at how other providers are doing. It will be interesting to see how others are performing.