Stuart Corner
Friday, 27 October 2006 08:59
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
ACCC boss, Graeme Samuel, has been getting a good deal of coverage this week for his stern words to ISPs about misrepresenting the speeds of their broadband services. But he has saying exactly the same thing over two years ago. Surely it's time for less talk and more action.
This week he was quoted addressing a business lunch in Melbourne saying: "It is not enough for service providers to make blanket claims that customers will get speeds up to certain threshold when significant limitations apply to the attainment of those speeds."
Hear Hear! Of course, the ACCC can and does take action against companies over misleading advertising. But such actions can be taken only against individual offenders and with such an uncertain quantity as broadband speeds, could be difficult to prosecute successfully. This is clearly a systemic problem and demands a system-wide solution.
However Samuel made the ACCC's concerns abundantly clear over two years ago when he addressed the Australian Telecommunications Users Group annual Conference in March 2004. This is what he said.
"It has been alleged that whilst ISPs are advertising broadband services that offer specific download rates, for example, 256 kilobits per second, the download speed when accessing Internet sites is often considerably less than this. Advertising that makes false claims about the standard, quality and value of products and services is a breach of the Trade Practices Act and will not be tolerated by the ACCC."
