Telstra - the way it is

Concerned about Telstra’s 3GB cap on Freedom Plan users? A conversation with Telstra representative, Stewart Gray, revealed that there’s more to the new policy than arguing over whether you come close to downloading 3GB per month.

Gray

Concerned about Telstra's 3GB cap on Freedom Plan users? A conversation with Telstra representative, Stewart Gray, revealed that there's more to the new policy than arguing over whether you come close to downloading 3GB per month.

Gray believes that the Freedom Plan subscription services are not 'unlimited' per se, and have never been advertised or represented as such. Our anecdotal evidence would suggest that Telstra phone operators do in fact tell prospective subscribers that the service is 'unlimited', but we won't argue the point seeing as it's his word against ours.

Gray maintains that the Freedom Plan services are in fact 'flat rate' plans. That means subscribers pay an unchanging set fee per month. This corresponds with Telstra's pricing policy at www.bigpond.com/broadband/cable/pricing.asp, and www.bigpond.com/broadband/adsl/pricing.asp, which stipulates that no additional rate is applicable after the usage allowance.

However, this is directly contradicted by para 9 of its Acceptable Use Policy FAQ at www.bigpond.com/broadband/support/aup/aupfaqs.asp?stage=9, where it stipulates that by October, subscribers can extend usage beyond the 3GB cap by paying an additional rate.

It may be construed that Telstra is selling a 'flat rate' plan when in fact it doesn't actually have the intention of selling a flat rate plan. On the face of it, this would appear to be in breach of the provisions of the Trade Practices Act 1974 for misleading and deceptive conduct (www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s52.html and www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s53.html). Mr. Gray commented that Telstra 'would have to look into that'.

In addition, the new Acceptable Use Policy effectively changes the substantive and fundamental nature of its original contract with subscribers. By law, Telstra's policy purports to breach the terms of the original contract, and by rights, all affected subscribers are entitled to restitution. This is why Telstra is allowing anyone who finds the new policy unacceptable to disconnect penalty-free.

However, restitution would also involve compensation of the proportion of subscription fees relative to the amount of time remaining on the subscription period of terminated contracts. Gray says that Telstra will not be compensating anyone.

During this interview, it became apparent that Gray gave no assurances that latency and performance would actually improve after implementation of the new Acceptable Use Policy.

On the upside, Optus@Home Manager of Corporate Communications, Sheila Dhillon, commented that Optus@Home plans to keep its existing Acceptable Use Policy over the long haul. Optus@Home allows a maximum usage of ten times the average subscriber usage - which equates to over 600MB per day. That's 18GB a month!
-Kevin Cheung