Telstra, Optus and TPG cop huge fines for misleading NBN speeds
Telstra, Optus and TPG have copped a combined A$33.5 million for lying to customers about their 50 and 100Mbps NBN speeds.
This relates to at least 12 months from 2019-2020 and affects at least 120,000 customers. In essence, NBN resellers must monitor customers’ speeds and offer a lower-cost plan, refunds, or full cancellations without penalty if they cannot reliably reach those speeds.
Telstra, Optus and TPG each undertook to tell consumers within a specific or reasonable timeframe if the contracted speed was unavailable. They were to offer a cheaper plan with a refund if that was the case. They did not do these things. Hundreds of thousands of consumers were misled by these three big internet providers. This behaviour is even more concerning because they were well aware of these issues and had earlier given undertakings to the ACCC to provide remedies to consumers with underperforming NBN FTTN plans. We are very disappointed that these companies did not take seriously the undertakings they gave to the ACCC.
ACCC
Why are the biggies so bad?
I can’t count the number of times Telstra and Optus have fallen foul of Australian Consumer Laws. The ACCC has previously taken legal action against Telstra. Not to mention the $50 million fine for unconscionable sales to indigenous customers.
Optus felt ACCC’s wrath in 2018, early 2019, and late 2019 about other false and misleading statements.
And TPG has had its fair share of fines and warnings.
My abysmal treatment from Tel$tra from 2017 to 2019 led to an acrimonious divorce where the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman ruled it has to refund at least two years of NBN 100/40 charges and pay a substantial fine. The issues were all due to faulty Tel$tra infrastructure and its inability to do simple troubleshooting. I swapped to Aussie Broadband, and the line has been fault-free and at full speed since.
A good friend at Speers Point Lake Macquarie put up with Vodafail for two years, paying for a 50/20 FTTN service but getting 5/2Mbps. Vodafail said it could not fix it. A swap to Aussie Broadband and a new TP-Link Deco X73 DSL AX5400 modem/router – every NBN FTTN user should have this fixed the problem immediately. Vodafail has yet to refund the user.
The real issues of Telstra, Optus and TPG are four-fold.
First, the major Telcos treat consumers as an unnecessary evil. They would rather have a commercial, government or defence customer any day. Hence Consumer service is crap, and they are happy to see consumers go to MVNO and smaller NBN resellers.
Second, they are like the Titanic – unable to react fast enough to miss the iceberg. Their consumer systems and service are crap.
Third, they know that most customers do not complain, and those that do are told it is the NBN’s fault – nothing to see here. My case proves the opposite. It was Tel$tra stuffing up a perfectly good NBN connection with its routing and billing systems.
And notice something different – a major NBN reseller can have good, local Australian service that wants to help you.
Fourth, about 30% of the NBN network uses Telstra’s old copper wire for the last mile to the home from a Fibre to the Node (FTTN). Reliability has improved, with 100% getting NBN25 speeds, 94% getting NBN50 speeds and 84% getting NBN100.
What can you do if the Internet is slow or unreliable?
You can run Ookla Speedtest, but it’s a manual process, and internet speeds vary from second to second.
I use a Fing Box attached to my router that monitors internet speeds and outages and gives a monthly report. You can set it to automate network speed tests and receive detailed reports on ISP performance. It is A$199 from Fingbox Australia. No NBN reseller can argue with me!
