ACMA to cut cost of calling 1800 and 13/1300 numbers from mobiles

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 11 October 2011 10:14

IT Policy - Regulation

The ACMA is planning to fix one of consumers' biggest complaints about mobile services: the high price of calling 1800 and 13/1300 numbers. It intends to make 1800 calls free and 13/1300 calls the same price as calls from a fixed line.

Calls to these numbers are excluded from most so called 'cap' plans and prices can be as high as $1.78 per minute, plus flagfall. Typically such numbers are used for customer service and callers often have to wait on hold for several minutes. So it is very easy for them to run up large bills.

Consumer organisation ACCAN has waged a protracted campaign against such charges, most recently with its 'Number Woman' initiative, launched in May. This followed a joint submission with The Australian Financial Counselling and Credit Reform Association (AFCCRA) and The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) to the ACMA last September.

The ACMA has published its proposal in a paper: 'Numbering: Calls to freephone and local rate numbers'”The way forward'.

The paper says: "Recognising the current importance of mobile telephony and in the absence of further information, the ACMA proposes that the Numbering Plan be varied in such a way that: calls from mobile phones to freephone numbers are free of charge to the calling party, so that 'free' means free [and] calls from mobile phones to local rate numbers are limited to the amount that a consumer would expect to pay for a local call made from a fixed-line phone."

The ACMA proposes a 12 month lead time for the changes to be implemented, noting that the changes will have an impact on a range of commercial arrangements such as the contractual arrangements between mobile service providers and individual subscribers an the arrangements between telco service providers that provide 1800 and 13 numbers and the organisation that use these numbers.

The changes would also impact on the payment arrangements between carriers (organisations that own and operate networks) and carriage service providers (organisations which use the networks to offer services to businesses and consumers).

CONTINUED