John Linton .....if it wasn't such a ridiculous concept that it moved beyond farce a long time ago.
The TIO has always been a commercial tragedy - dreamed up by Telstra to serve its own interests (it was much cheaper than fixing its own support and provisioning problems) and blindly followed by Optus which meant that, between the two of them, they accounted for 95% of the complaints about telephone wire driven services. It was much cheaper for Telstra to pretend to 'self regulate' than fix its appallingly bad customer service problems and the TIO was, from the start, staffed by moronic dross from the unemployment queues whose knowledge of the simplicities, let alone the complexities, of the telephony industry could have been written on the back of half a bus ticket. So you read articles such as this:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/telcos-should-hang-up-on-selfregulation-plan-accc-20111207-1oj6l.html
and despair about the nannyism that has become so prevalent in Australian society, especially over the past four years. The key areas of problems mentioned in the article are, of course, not self regulated and never have been - "New standards for advertising, pricing information and spend-management tools". ACMA does all that 'litigation' based on their own lack of understanding of what telecommunications is all about and the labyrinthine ways of displaying such data that Telstra, closely followed by Optus have put in place over the past 20 years which has been slavishly copied by the vast majority of their wholesalers and then other very small 'independent' telecommunication providers.
Does any of this need to be 'regulated' in the first place? Personally I can't see any reason at all.....unless Australian society is aiming at an East German Sovietisation of governmental control over every aspect of societal interaction.....and before you jump down my throat for expressing such an exaggerated view.....tell me what improvement ACMA has actually delivered over its existence and then tell me what it has cost the tax payer over that time? You can't do that can you?....and neither can I because the figures are impossible to find and people like you and me just accept that all governments are wasteful of our money and they all create sheltered workshops on the Federal payroll to provide the unemployable with somewhere to spend the days they want to go into the office to use the internet and telephone for their personal purposes.
If a company (like Telstra) falsely advertises then 'self regulation' is not going to stop them doing that and ACMA, on its record to date, is not going to do anything effective either - what will happen is that people (with half a brain) will see the lies for what they are and not buy the products or services and the people (without half a brain) will be conned and not notice because they are stupid and that's what happens to the stupid in very aspect of life. If the government nannies want to protect the stupid from the inevitable results of their stupidities perhaps they should close all the betting shops and pubs so that these dummies won't spend their dole money on picking losing horses or station police at every hotel bar to stop the stupid from tipping too much alcohol down their throats. Perhaps the same nannies should raise the age of 'marriage' to 35 to stop the stupidities that arise when people without a skerrick of commonsense pledge their undying love to each other at 18 and then screw their own, any everyone around them, lives in to chaos? You get the point - where does nannyism actually stop once you try and protect the terminally stupid from the results of their own decisions? If any federal government really wanted to 'protect the Australian public from nasty commercial exploitation the would ban tobacco and alcohol and close all race courses and casinos.
But no - why not 'regulate' the telecommunications industry - that's a really pernicious bunch of financial rapists and looters. I have a better idea. Abolish the War Department (it isn't a Department of Defence - we haven't had to defend anything since 1944 but we sure have made war on a lot of people who we never knew and posed no threat of any kind to us since then) thereby returning $1,500 in taxes every year to every human being in Australia and then progressively close all the money spending for no discernible result federal sinecures, such as ACMA, to return a further $1,500 to every human being in Australia. Then cut Federal politicians by 75%, abolish State government entirely and invest all this money in education, German and Japanese manufacturers to ensure that the population is well educated and can easily afford Mercedes, Porsches and Flat Screen TVs now that they have stopped pissing their money away on booze, gambling and smoking (we would also need 75% less hospitals and health care 'professionals' as a side bonus).
Makes much more sense than telecommunications self regulation.
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