The ACMA proposed five major changes to industry practice in its Reconnecting the Customer public inquiry report. The changes were designed to make it simpler for telco customers to buy and use a mobile phone and internet service.

Telcos will undergo regular compliance monitoring and the industry will continue to develop benchmarking standards and ways to measure customer service.

Providers must send notification alerts of data, voice calls and SMS usage within included value plans when customers reach particular thresholds.

Telcos must be clear about what they are offering and stop using confusing terms, such as the word ‘cap’ (unless the offer refers to a ‘hard cap’).

Quicker handling of standard complaints—two days for acknowledgement and three weeks for resolution. Urgent complaints resolved within two days.

Telcos must be able to prove advertising claims about broadband speeds and network coverage to the ACMA upon request.

Telcos must provide unit pricing for national calls, standard SMS and downloading 1 MB of data in advertisements where price is quoted for internet and mobile included value plans.

The ACMA commissioned a number of research studies to inform its thinking in its Reconnecting the Customer inquiry. Five of these studies were released at the same time as the inquiry draft report on 1 June 2011.

As the ACMA’s public inquiry into customer service and complaints-handling issues in the telecommunications industry concludes, we look back at how the inquiry unfolded.