Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Choice claimed that "not all consumer codes have been developed with adequate consumer input," and it singled out the premium mobile services industry code as one where "industry gamed the process for its own advantage." Gordon Renouf, Choice's manager of policy and campaigns, told iTWire that, after 18 months developing a code through TISSC, "AMTA did not like it so they threw it out and came up with one of their own."
Choice has called for the creation of a generic set of principles and procedural requirements for codes that affect consumer contracts or conduct in consumer markets. Renouf said: "What we would like to see happen is for the Commonwealth Government, through the PC review and its response to set standards for code development across all industries. At the moment we have a silo approach. In finance we do it one way, in telecommunications another and in energy another.
"There are good aspects to all of these but there should be a generic good practice code development model under the leadership of the Commonwealth and appropriate changes made in each industry to bring those in to line."
Choice also wants changes to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to bring it into line with dispute resolution bodies in other sectors. Renouf said "If you look at the dispute resolution services in the finance sector, you have very clear rules that the governance structures are balanced between industry and consumers with an independent chair which is not the case with the TIO. It has a supervisory board made up entirely of industry people and a day-to-day body which is balanced."
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
