[LINK] Fwd: Greens-Media: E-COMMERCE CHALLENGE 4 Aug 04

[Jan Whitaker]

At 04:47 PM 8/08/2004, rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au wrote:
>Only a very few ISPs (say, about six that I can name) show any clue about 
>SMEs. The rest are dross; and the SME has no way of assessing the worth of 
>a provider in advance. Caveat emptor is only valid where emtpor has some 
>remote hope of understanding what constitutes caveat!

There was a story on the news here showing John Lenders [Consumer Affairs 
Minister, VIC] saying that state authorities are going to crack down on 
mobile phone contracts. He held up one with all the info and it was about 
8" thick, more than the state budget papers as he put it.

I was thinking that since ADSL is the 'new mobile phone', maybe that is 
where they could do some good.  The Whirlpool website does a pretty good 
job of explaining what to look out for in choosing a service 
[transportability being one], but there is more to be done to even get 
services available.

Also, there seems to be some movements to do petitions for specific 
areas.  I signed one yesterday for my suburb.

But my guess is that the 'market' won't fix this and the trade practice 
groups and ACCC need to get involved.  E.g. who is going to tell Telstra 
that 2 yr contracts are terrible for ADSL or cable internet and get it 
changed?  It certainly won't be the customer.  Why should those contracts 
be different from mobile contracts?

Jan


JLWhitaker Associates
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at melbpc.org.au  --  http://member.melbpc.org.au/~jwhit/whitentr.htm
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