As carriers squabble with the NBN, the federal government has ordered the Australian Communications and Media Authority to put an end to the blame game.
ACMA will request information on “fault handling, connection timeframes, appointment keeping, telephone number porting, and more” from 21 business related to the NBN, including retailers, wholesale providers and NBN Co itself, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield said in a statement.
“This information will be used to identify where customer issues most commonly arise and how those issues can be either avoided or resolved more quickly. It will also help reduce the passing of customer complaints between retailers and nbn,” Fifield said.
ACMA will also commission research on the experience of customers before, during and after their migration to the NBN across all technology types used for the network including FTTP, FTTN and FTTC.
Alongside ACMA’s research and data collection, Fifield noted “another key initiative to the NBN customer experience” was ACCC’s plan to monitor and publish realistic broadband speed data.
Telcos and the NBN have recently been at odds over who is to blame for the reports of poor customer experiences.
NBN has blamed telcos for not buying enough capacity on the network, while Vodafone and other telcos have complained about the high price of the Connectivity Virtual Circuit (CVC) charge currently imposed.
The ACCC previously said it expected to commence legal proceedings against telcos for misleading NBN speed claims by the end of the year.
