“With Telstra and now Optus revealing the extent of customers being misled over attainable FttN and FttB line speeds, we call on all other NBN service providers to proactively review service speeds of customers and follow their example.” Internet Australia chair Dr Paul Brooks said on Tuesday.
As reported by iTWire on Monday, Optus has become the second telco to offer compensation to its customers on certain NBN plans, with about 8700 users to be offered "remedies" for being misled about the maximum speeds they could achieve.
Telstra came to an agreement with the competition watchdog, the ACCC, last month over the same issue.
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And in early November Telstra offered to remedy around 42,000 customers, where almost 10,000 customers subscribed to the 100/40 Mbps plan couldn’t even achieve 50 Mbps, and over 9000 customers could not even reach the government’s minimum line speed guarantee of 25 Mbps, due to their FttN copper lines being too long to achieve the subscribed service speed.
“This is not actually a restriction caused by the Telstra or Optus service – this issue will be affecting a similar percentage of customers with all service providers using the NBN FTTN and FTTB technology types,” notes Dr Brooks.
“All service providers should follow Telstra and Optus’s lead, and proactively check each of their FTTN customers’ actual achieved line-speed.
Dr Brooks says all service providers that use an aggregator or wholesale provider rather than connecting directly to the NBN should push their wholesaler to make available the line speed data that NBN Co has for each of their customer lines.
“Internet Australia notes this is not a new revelation, and could have been avoided if the service providers and NBN Co had not decided three years ago to treat subscribers with contempt by misleading customers about the speeds their house or building might achieve.”
Dr Brooks says in April 2014, in a consultation paper issued to retail ISPs (not publicly available at this time), NBN identified that selecting the correct speed plan would be “the responsibility of the end user and the provider”.
“As reported by journalist Renai LeMay the document from NBN Co stated : “For example, NBN Co does not intend to prevent end users and/or providers from ordering the ‘Up to 100Mbps’ speed tier for a service that would typically experience speeds of less than 50Mbps”.
“This passing-the-buck on to the RSPs is at the heart of the refunds now being required, as only NBN Co has the data and means to match predicted line speed against the ordered speed, and could have flagged the problem at the time of each order from the service providers,” Dr Brooks says.
“Shortly after this ACCC identified in a Senate Estimates session that NBN Co might be considered to be misleading consumers if it allowed RSPs to order speeds higher than the speed the line could actually achieve – which is exactly what has been allowed to occur.
“For all new subscribers, we call on all service providers to show more respect for their new customers and consumer law, and not sell service characteristics like line speeds that the customer will never be able to achieve.
“Ideally all customers should be informed of the likely maximum speed they will be able to achieve prior to signing up – the data is now available from NBN Co, and some RSPs now provide a service qualification tool to staff.
“Failing that, all FttN and FttB subscribers should have their line speed reviewed by the ISP within weeks of connection, and be contacted proactively by the provider and permitted to switch to a lower cost plan consistent with their actual line-speed if there is a discrepancy."
