Legislated Customer Service Guarantee for Standard Telephone Services

Introduction

The Customer Service Guarantee (“CSG”) is a legislated standard (“the CSG Standard”) issued by the Australian Communications Authority under the Telecommunications (Customer Service Guarantee) Standard 2000, as amended. The CSG Standard specified certain requirements which Carriage Service Providers (including Lets Go) must adhere to in relation to the provision and repair of Standard Telephone Services and appointments associated with these activities.

The following is a summary of key features of the CSG Standard, including – scope, the specified timeframes and CSG entitlements (extracted from Telstra:http://www.telstra.com.au/csg/teleserv.htm).

Scope of CSG Standard

The CSG Standard applies to all fixed telephone companies and covers the Standard Telephone Service (STS) and five specified Enhanced Call Handling Features or Value Add Services (VAS).

These features are:

What is covered?

Consistent with the Federal Government’s stated policy on CSG application to Residential and Small Business Customers, the CSG Standard applies only to customers with no greater than five Standard Telephone Services. A customer does not include a carrier or a carriage service provider.

The CSG Standard applies to:

For connections, Standard Telephone Services are eligible regardless of what is connected at the end of the service (eg. Internet or fax). However, for repairs, only voice telephony faults are covered. This means that non-voice faults such as Internet access or fax faults are not covered by the CSG Standard.

What is not covered?

The CSG Standard does not apply to data products, including:

It also does not apply to mobile or satellite services, unless these are used to deliver Universal Service Obligation (USO) telephone services.

Importantly the CSG Standard does not apply to activities past the network boundary point (NBP), namely, the first telephone socket, the network termination device (NTD) or the main distribution frame (MDF) where applicable.

Customer service locations

The CSG Standard is also dependant upon the demographic categories as described below:

Service Location Category Demographic Size
Urban Township/community grouping of 10,000 people or more
Major Rural Township/community grouping of more than 2,500 people but less than 10,000 people
Minor Rural Township/community grouping of 201 people or more but not more than 2,500 people within a standard zone
Remote Township/community grouping of less than 200 people or township/community grouping located outside a standard zone
Appointments

For appointments, the CSG Standard allows the following grace periods as shown below:

Service Location Appointment Period Grace period
All Locations Less than or equal to 4 hours 15 minutes
Urban and Major Rural Greater than 4 hours and less than or equal to 5 hours None
Minor Rural and Remove Greater than 4 hours and less than or equal to 5 hours1 45 minutes

1

Where there is a need to travel a long distance

Notifying Multiline

When requesting a connection or reporting a fault, customers are required to contact Multiline by 5 pm on a business day for the specified connection or fault. Timeframes apply from the time of reporting on that day.

Customer requests received after this time will be taken to have been received the following business day.

A business day is a day that is not a Saturday, a Sunday or a public holiday in the customer service area.

Connections

Multiline will apply the "guaranteed maximum connection periods" set out below. The time frames are consistent with the CSG Standard.

Service Location In-place connection New connection with infrastructure and spare capacity New connection without infrastructure or spare capacity
Urban Within 2 working days after request Within 5 working days after request Within 20 working days (equivalent to 1 month) after request
Major Rural Within 2 working days after request Within 10 working days after request Within 20 working days (equivalent to 1
 
month) after request
Minor Rural Within 2 working days after request Within 10 working days after request2 Within 20 working days (equivalent to 1 month) after request
Remote Within 2 working days after request Within 15 working days after request Within 20 working days (equivalent to 1 month) after request

1

An in-place connection is a connection of a Standard Telephone Service at a site where a previous working service has been cancelled by the previous account holder and is available for automatic reconnection or reactivation without the need for Concept to do any other connection work at the customer premises, the local telephone exchange, or any places in between.

2

The legislated connection timeframe for a New connection with infrastructure and spare capacity in a Minor Rural location is 15 working days.

Repairs

The guaranteed maximum repair periods specified by the CSG Standard are:

Service Location Time for Repair1
Urban End of one full working day after report1
Major Rural End of two full working days after report
Minor Rural End of two full working days after report
Remote End of three full working days after report

1 The time for repair relating to 'end of one full working day after report' applies to all service locations where the fault occurs due to an administrative error by the telephone company, or if the fault can be rectified without the telephone company attending customer premises or undertaking internal or external plant work.

How much do we pay?

We are liable to make a CSG payment to you in accordance with the CSG Standard in the following circumstances:

When the CSG Standard does not apply

The CSG Standard does not apply in certain circumstances, including the following: