114/05
4 October 2005

ACMA telecommunications performance report

The Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan, today welcomed the first telecommunications performance report from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

“This report shows Telstra performing strongly across the country, but especially in rural and remote areas,” Senator Coonan said.

“Telstra has managed to reduce the number of faults in rural and remote areas in 2004–05 compared to 2003–04 which is excellent news for customers living in regional Australia.

“It is disappointing that Telstra’s overall fault numbers in urban areas have increased in 2004–05, and I expect that this is something that Telstra itself will be keen to address.”

The Telecommunications Performance Monitoring Bulletin provides a detailed analysis of phone company performance for the year to 30 June 2005 and reveals some interesting trends in performance. The bulletin reports on the performance of Telstra, Optus, AAPT and Primus in complying with the Australian Government’s Customer Service Guarantee.

“Telstra has performed strongly, completing 96 per cent of its connections within the timeframes required by the Government’s Customer Service Guarantee,” Senator Coonan said.

“Both Telstra and Optus have improved their performance in meeting the Customer Service Guarantee timeframes for fault repair.

“Nationally Telstra completed 92 per cent of its repairs within required timeframes, up one per cent on last year.”

The reliability of Telstra’s fixed phone network is closely monitored by ACMA through the Network Reliability Framework.

“The bulletin shows that over the year in review, an average of 99.06 per cent of services remained fault free each month,” said Senator Coonan.

“It is encouraging to see that on ACMA’s estimation, 90 per cent of phone services did not experience a fault in 2004–05.”

This report demonstrates the success and importance of the tough, regulated consumer safeguards that the Government has imposed.

“Before the introduction of the Customer Service Guarantee regulation, some consumers could wait more than two years for Telstra to connect a phone service. Now consumers are guaranteed a service within 20 working days,” Senator Coonan said.

The bulletin is available on ACMA’s website: www.acma.gov.au