Preparing for the Broadband World: Fostering Consumer Confidence Through Collaboration and Partnerships: A Communications Alliance Research Project

Since the introduction of the Telecommunications Act 1997, the Australian telecommunications industry has become a diversified and competitive sector, and the principle of co-regulation has become firmly established. Competition and technological innovation bring substantial benefits to consumers in terms of an ever-expanding array of choices, but this comes at the cost of a proliferating confusion of features, options, pricing and usage monitoring arrangements. Consumer experience and knowledge lags well behind these changes in technology. Dissatisfaction can be considered to be the gap between expectation and delivery. What needs to be addressed is therefore not simply failure but perception that failure has occurred.