As Australia shifts from its legacy fixed broadband infrastructure onto the National Broadband Network (NBN), it should come as little surprise that the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) is receiving increasing numbers of complaints.
However over the last six months, those numbers have increased in relative, as well as absolute, terms.
Contained in the TIO's annual report, NBN services make up the bulk of complaints received by the TIO in the categories of switching providers, at 56% versus 31% for non-NBN networks and 13% for mobile networks. This uptick in NBN complaints also extends to service quality, with 48% of complaints being from NBN services compared to 40% on non-NBN networks and 11% on mobile.
In the past six months, the TIO has seen changing provider complaints rise from 6.7 per 1,000 premises added to the network between July and December 2018 to a 8.6 ratio between January and July 2019. In absolute terms, this represents 4,213 and 7,422 complaints for the two periods.
Similarly, service complaints have risen from 2.1 complaints per 1,000 NBN-connected premises for the latter half of last year to 2.5 complaints per 1,000 NBN premises for the first six months of this year.
The rise in complaints reverses some of the gains[1] the TIO reported for NBN services in April.
Overall, the TIO received 132,400 complaints for the 2018-19 fiscal year, a drop of 21% compared to last year, and the lowest level since the 2015-16 edition of its annual report. Of that total,