After months of secret negotiations, Telstra, Optus & Voda have rolled over and ‘offered’ ACCC a court enforceable undertaking … equivalent to court injunctions … to stamp out false advertising in the broadband and telephony industry.
When legal advisers warn second and third tier telcos and ISPs about advertising content, the single most common retort is ‘Telstra gets away with it’ and ‘We saw an Optus ad like that’ and ‘But Voda says the same thing’.
It’s a pretty good argument. If the giants can do it, why can’t we ?
No mistake, this is the biggest telco-truth-in-advertising hit ever landed by the national regulator. Like all good commando raids, it seemed to come from nowhere. Only yesterday morning did rumours start to circulate that ‘something big’ was coming out of Canberra in the next 24 hours.
If Tiers 2, 3 & 4 don’t get their act together now, they can’t complain they’re being picked on. And ACCC has made sure that Telstra, Optus & Voda are motivated to keep their networks honest.
The Senate Standing Committee on Economics has received, and noted, strong submissions that part of the proposed new unfair contracts law can’t be right. 
Finance companies are racing against time to squeeze money out of Australian small businesses before a major Federal Court case shows that their contracts are unenforceable.
We 
Ads that show ‘two price’ or ‘was / now’ pricing are common, effective and legal … provided they’re not misleading. There are special rules about how to get ‘was / now” pricing ads right. While care needs to be taken, getting it right is relatively easy.
In the latest action in its war on trade practices non-compliance in the telco sector, ACCC has taken Federal Court action against a wholly owned subsidiary of Optus Mobile Pty Ltd.
Seminar notes from today’s popular ‘Component Pricing Law’ seminar at Logie-Smith Lanyon Lawyers are now 
There’s an element in the proposed national unfair contract terms law that:
On 24 June 2009, the Government introduced the Australian Consumer Law Bill into Parliament. It represents the biggest shake up of Australian consumer law in a long time.
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