News article written by Corbett Communications. The statements made or opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Engineers Australia.
While mobile-based complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) decreased in 2015-16, there has been an increase in the number of complex technical cases, making up almost 40% of its workload compared to 30% the previous year. The NBN was also a source of increased new complaints, doubling on the 2014-15 year.
The TIO said new complaints this year had decreased 9.6% to 112,518 compared to the 2014-15 year when 124,417 were received. In fact, the number of new complaints has steadily come down from 138,946 in 2013-14 and 158,652 in 2012-13. The TIO puts this down to “an increased focus by industry on improving customer service, changes to telecommunications regulations and substantial investment to improve mobile infrastructure”.
And while there was a reduction in mobile complaints there was an increase observed in the proportion of complaints about internet services, with 38,877 new complaints – 22.1% more than the previous year (31,835) and the highest number since 2010-11.
“We noted a greater proportion of technical complaint issues in 2015-16 and cases that took longer to resolve,” the TIO said. “This meant the work effort did not diminish in line with the complaint numbers.”
Of the 112,518 new complaints received this year, the internet made up 34.6%, mobile was 36.6% and landline 28.8%. The main issues in internet complaints were related to problems with slow internet speed, unusable services, delayed connections and service drop-outs. The TIO noted that the proportion of each of these issues increased in 2015-16 compared to the previous year. There were 7663 new complaints about slow data speed, 6994 about total unusability and 6680 regarding delays in new connections.
Complaints about the five major service providers - Telstra, Vodafone, Optus, iiNet and TPG - represented 83.6% of new complaints in 2015-16, the TIO revealed. Overall, complaints about Telstra had dropped but internet issues had risen. Problems with Optus had risen but complaints about its mobile services had decreased dramatically throughout the year. New complaints about Vodafone were almost a third (7830) of what they had been the previous year, with a massive drop in mobile issues and a more moderate decrease in internet problems.
iiNet, which is actually owned by TPG, showed a 48.2% increase in new complaints across mobile, internet and landline, with internet issues more than doubling in the 2014-15 year. TPG generated a slight rise in new complaints to the TIO with service issues for landline and mobile dropping but there was a rise in internet issues.
Consumers in NSW, Victoria and Queensland complained to the TIO the most and mainly from major cities. The TIO said the rollout of the NBN resulted in 13,406 new complaints, twice as many as the previous year. At 30 June 2016, more than 2.8 million premises were serviceable on the NBN, it stated, and services had been activated on more than one million premises. The most significant complaint issues were about slow data speeds, unusable services and drop-outs, making up more than a third of all internet and landline issues recorded this year.
“Fault issues for NBN services increased 147.8% compared to last year,” the TIO revealed. “[And] connection issues for NBN services increased 63.2% compared to 2014-15.”
The other main issues (7948 complaints) were connection delays and missed appointments – a fifth of all internet and landline connection issues for the year. But it wasn’t all bad news. The TIO said complaints about mobile services were down 28.8% this year to 41,269 - the lowest level in 10 years.
“We have noticed a steady improvement in some of the most publicised issues over the past five years, including mobile coverage, excess data and roaming charge and drop-outs,” the agency said. “New complaints about mobile services now make up 36.6% of our workload compared to 63.4% in 2011-12.”
The TIO gave the reasons for the drop in mobile service complaints as more investment in mobile infrastructure; better product offerings; stronger industry code rules; and the International Mobile Roaming Standard.
Author: Desi Corbett