Telstra preemted the outcome of a court case it had today and said it was going to plea guilty when in fact it didn’t.
Bigpondnews.com reported this morning that Telstra, its sister company, would likely plead guilty to allegations by the ACCC that is was misleading and deceptive in telling wholesale customers that several telephone exchanges were full when they weren’t.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009 » 08:33am
Telstra is likely to admit to allegations brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that could lead to a $300 million fine.
Telstra is accused of misleading and deceptive conduct by telling its wholesale customers that seven telephone exchanges were full when they were not.
Analysts say Telstra’s competitors are likely to use the admission to argue that it should be separated up to prevent such conduct.
The irony in all of this is that Bigpond has an interest in Telstra as it is apart of the one company.
A Telstra spokesperson indicated to Tech Wired that it had either accidentally syndicated the article or based it off of a report in the Australian Financial Review that Telstra would admit it was guilty of wrongdoing.
The article has since been removed.
Over the years we’ve seen the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) instigate various legal action against Australia’s largest telecommunications provider, Telstra. This Wednesday saw the ACCC announce further legal action.
From what is known it seems that the ACCC are investigating Telstra for giving wholesalers information that they believe is untrue.
Initial investigations by the ACCC found that Telstra denied wholesalers access to several metropolitan telephone exchanges claiming that they were “capped”.
The ACCC specifically alleges that:
“…there was capacity available, or that could have been made available, on Telstra’s main distribution frames.”
Telstra said in a statement:
“The ACCC is suing us for something we proactively and voluntarily reviewed and fixed a year ago. This case relates to a small number of inadvertent process issues. There was an issue and we fixed it – without the involvement of the ACCC. Since we fixed the problem a year ago, the ACCC has not once suggested it had problems with our new processes.”
David Quilty, Telstra’s Group Managing Director of Public Policy and Communications said that the court action was a complete waste of court time and taxpayer money.
The ACCC announcement came to the table on the same day as rumours started to appear claiming the National Broadband Network (NBN) winner.
The rumour suggested that Acacia have won the NBN, and if so they’ll be hoping for legislative change to allow it access to Telstra’s network.
Once a Federal Court directions hearing is held on April 17th we’ll know more.
Angry eBay users are expected to bombard a meeting today between the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) and PayPal Australia.
In regards to what?
Well eBay is trying to enforce new policies of which the ACCC does not agree with.
As Tech Wired Australia has previously reported on eBay wants users to only use the payment method of PayPal, of which it owns.
The issue is that the ACCC and 700+ other online merchants believe enforcing users to only use PayPal is unfair competition.
So in protest, during a meeting between the ACCC and PayPal in Sydney today, users are expected to be protesting according to Inside Retailing.
Will keep you posted.
Original source: PayPal protesters descend on Sydney
Found out though: http://www.twitter.com/Warlach
