The ACCC has announced the launch of an Information Paper entitled “Mobile and Other Wireless Internet Speed Claims and the Trade Practices Act 1974″.
The Information Paper has been developed to assist ISPs and Telcos in ensuring that their advertising for mobile and wireless internet is compliant with the Trade Practices Act 1974, and in particular the consumer protection provisions such as s52.
ACCC has made Dodo Australia give a Court enforceable undertaking to issue refunds customers and discount monthly plans, as a result of misleading statements.
According to ACCC, Dodo advertised misleading ‘free’ offer plans between October 2008 and March 2009 on both the television and its website.
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The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) yesterday announced it had rejected Telstra’s undertaking to charge competitors a $30 monthly fee to access ULL in metropolitan areas.ACCC expressed surprise that Telstra’s $30 application worked out to be higher than the previous proposal of $30 for metropolitan areas, which was rejected in 2006.
It has been reported that German domain name regulator, DENIC, has taken down the popular website www.wikileaks.de shortly after it published ACMA’s internet filtering trial black list.Over recent weeks, many reports have emerged of the ACMA internet filtering trial black list having been published on different websites, potentially compromising the Government’s current internet filtering trials. One such website was www.Wikileaks.de.
The TIO recently released its complaints data for the December 2008 quarter, which identifies problem areas for ISPs and telcos – one of those is complaint handling.The report is a good opportunity to review what’s required of CSPs by the Telecommunications Consumer Protections Code.
Canberra ISP ByteCard has received a formal warning from ACMA for failing to comply with the TIO Scheme.The warning comes after disputes were alleged to have remained unresolved, as a consequence of this ISP’s refusal to comply with the TIO Scheme.
According to ACMA:
The TIO referred this matter to ACMA because Bytecard had failed to cooperate with the TIO in relation to two continuing matters. Both the TIO and ACMA have made attempts to encourage Bytecard to voluntarily comply with the TIO Scheme, without success.
Last week we reported on an announcement by ACCC Chairman Graeme Samuels, that the ACCC would be taking action unless the Premium Service operators cleaned up their act. Today we have been contacted by a reader who has alerted us to a new scam one shonky operator is using.
Our reader received an SMS which said something along the lines of “who are you, and why did you call me“, of course our reader had no idea who the SMS was from, and thought to himself, ‘who could this be, I don’t recall ringing a wrong number’.
As it is with most of us, curiosity got the better of him, so he replied to say that the sender must have the wrong number, and that they must be mistaken.
ACMA have reported that Westpac was issued with a formal warning for breaches of the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 (‘the Act’).
ACMA reported that Westpac was the bank that had the greatest number of complaints made against it to ACMA, concerning alleged breaches of the the Act. ACMA claim that although Westpac had a relationship with its customers, ‘its procedures for recording the withdrawal of consent had failed.’
In the wake of the terrible bush fires that hit Victoria, new regulations create an exception to the use and disclosure offences under Part 13 of the Telecommunications Act 1997.Part 13 of the Act requires that Carriers, CSPs, their employees and contractors protect the confidentiality of protected information such as the content of communications, the affairs and personal particulars of people and namely the integrated public number database. The offences under this part are contained in sections 276 to 278, and can include a penalty of imprisonment against offenders.
Despite massive opposition from the public and internet users, to ISP level internet filtering, the Government is pressing on with its internet filtering trials.We don’t yet know what the result of these trials will be, but the Europeans have developed an alternate approach to the issue of protecting children from harmful content online.
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