The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment recently conducted a review of the Telecommunications Act to establish a regulatory framework for fibre fixed line access services.
As part of the review, a number of new consumer provisions have been added to the Act to improve retail service quality (RSQ) through increased information and added consumer protections.
The new consumer provisions require the Commission to monitor aspects of retail service quality including performance, speed and availability, customer service, billing, and installation issues, and provide information for consumers to help them with their choices of technologies and providers. The new provisions also allow the Commission to create retail service quality codes if industry-led codes are inadequate, and requires the Commission to periodically review the Telecommunications Dispute Resolution scheme.
Our RSQ framework sets out the approach that we will take to implement the new consumer provisions. We hope to gain a better understanding of RSQ, prioritise what we will focus on, and determine the appropriate tools to use to improve RSQ, if required.
We will publish a process and issues paper in early 2019 outlining how we plan to engage with consumers and industry stakeholders to set up the collection of retail service quality data. The paper will also provide initial thinking on what metrics could be good indicators of retail service quality.