Carriers' performance improves a bit in Q3 2004

The Telecommunications Performance Monitoring Bulletin monitors telephone service levels provided by the major carriers -- AAPT, Optus, Primus and Telstra - under the Customer Service Guarantee (CSG) and the Network Reliability Framework (NRF) measures.

ACA's acting chairman, Dr Bob Horton, said that between July, August and September, all four companies had, on average, responded to connections requests within CSG timeframes 97 percent of the time.

Optus and Primus came off best with 99 percent of service connections within the required timeframe while AAPT achieved connection requests on time 97 percent of the time. Telstra's overall connection performance was 97 percent within targeted timeframes but the company only achieved a 93 percent success rate when dealing with new connections and decreased in rural areas.

"Telstra's performance in meeting CSG timeframes for connecting telephone services in major rural areas that were not close to available infrastructure declined further. The percentage of new services connected in these areas dropped from 93 percent to 89 percent in the 12 months to September 2004," said Horton.

However, Telstra managed to improve its fault repair performance from 88 percent within CSG timeframes to 93 percent when compared to the previous quarter. Optus' fault repair performance remained stable at 98 percent.