TIO Annual Report 2004/05

Internet Service Issues (Overview)

Overview — 16,012 issues raised.
Broadband complaints to the TIO doubled in the past year, confirming the comment by the ACCC in its March quarterly snapshot of broadband deployment that, between March 2004 and March 2005, broadband take-up had increased by 121.8% from 829,300 to 1,839,700 users.

For ease of classification the TIO labels ADSL, cable, satellite and wireless services as broadband. The TIO introduced the wireless category this year, but has received only a small number of complaints about these services, although they are clearly increasing in popularity.

Broadband services now constitute three quarters of all internet complaints to the TIO. Overall 16,012 complaints about internet service issues were received, a 54.1% increase on 2003/04 (10,388).

Nearly 16% of complaints were about the provisioning of services, but only 1% of these were about dial-up services. These figures indicate that while people are moving to broadband in growing numbers, the experience isn’t always trouble free.

Billing, at 26.5%, remains the largest area of complaint, with dial-up accounting for more than a third of billing complaints, indicating that although consumers do not appear to be experiencing difficulties in provisioning dial-up internet services, they continue to experience billing problems.

Customer service is a growing area of concern, moving from 18.3% of complaints last year to 22%. This is particularly troubling, with customers relying increasingly on their ISPs as technology becomes more complex.

On a pleasing note, complaints concerning credit management and privacy were very low.

In response to the complexity of broadband issues, the TIO has assigned four staff to the role of specialist Broadband Investigation Officers. The initiative has been extremely successful in increasing staff knowledge. It has also led to the development of several new TIO position statements, particularly on broadband provisioning. Further position statements will be developed in 2005/06.
The Broadband Investigation Officers are led by the Systemic Complaints Officer, Julia Cornwell, the TIO’s technology expert. Julia has conducted several systemic investigations relating to broadband and technology.

This year, the TIO began taking complaints about services supplied under the Higher Bandwidth Incentive Scheme (HiBIS).

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