Chapter 2 - Bell Canada International Inc – COT testing process

 

A Telstra internal email, dated 13 December 1993, shows AUSTEL’s deputy chair, Dr Bob Horton, allowed Telstra to limit its mandatory parameter testing to only those customers that Telstra stated required testing, i.e.,

“This E-Mail is to alert you to a possible regulatory interaction with the current work on ‘COTS Cases’ and ongoing work with AUSTEL on network performance.

“As you know, a Ministerial Direction gave AUSTEL power to set end-to-end network performance standards. …

“The AUSTEL staff member leading the group originally wanted a very wide list of mandatory parameters but after discussion with Bob Horton and a presentation to the Standards Advisory Committee by , AUSTEL have agreed to limit the scope of the initial work to the few parameters our customer surveys had shown as being of most concern.” (See Arbitrator File No/72)

Dr Horton was AUSTEL’s acting chair at the time. It is easy to see just how bad this situation was for me by simply linking this limitation of the mandatory testing with another Telstra internal email, dated 15 November 1993, which states that:

“Parameters for Cape Bridgewater RCM have been obtained, but I don’t believe them – I am attempting to check them. Some of the people supplying this information live in ‘old Telecom’!” (See Arbitrator File No/73)

The following is from the transcript of an oral interview of AUSTEL’s representatives, Bruce Matthews and John McMahon, conducted at the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s Office on 22 September 1994. On page 7 of this transcript, John Wynack asks, “What was the date the report was issued, the AUSTEL report?”

AUSTEL’s representative replies, “The final report was April – I can’t remember the date in April, but April 1994. The draft report was produced in March 1994 and Telecom received their copy of that at the time.” (As we have shown throughout this website, see Falsification Reports File No/4)

While this statement by one of AUSTEL’s representatives makes it clear that Telstra received a copy of AUSTEL’s draft findings, NONE of the information in this report, which enabled the government communications regulator (AUSTEL) to arrive at their adverse findings against the Telstra Corporation, was ever made available to the COT claimants during their arbitrations. The version we received in 2007 was not the draft version we viewed in the lock-up meeting.

PLEASE NOTE:

I have highlighted below what I consider a fraud of the highest level. Fraud by a government regulator to minimise the government's liability to its citizens on such a significant issue constitutes criminal conduct. 

The following letters, dated 8 and 9 April 1994, to AUSTEL’s chair from Telstra’s group general manager, suggest AUSTEL was far from genuinely independent and could instead be manipulated to alter its official findings in its COT reports, as Telstra requests in many of the points in this first letter. For example, Telstra writes:

“The Report, when commenting on the number of customers with COT-type problems, refers to a research study undertaken by Telecom at Austel’s request. The Report extrapolates from those results and infers that the number of customers so affected could be as high as 120 000. …

And the next day:

“In relation to point 4, you have agreed to withdraw the reference in the Report to the potential existence of 120,000 COT-type customers and replace it with a reference to the potential existence of “some hundreds” of COT-type customers” (See Open Letter File No/11)

Point 2.71 in AUSTEL’s April 1994 formal report notes:

“the number of Telecom customers experiencing COT type service difficulties and faults is substantially higher than Telecom’s original estimate of 50”.

It is disconcerting that Telstra (the defendant) was able to pressure the government regulator to change its original findings in the formal AUSTEL report dated 13 April 1994. The 120,000 other customers—ordinary Australian citizens who were experiencing COT-type problems—are not referred to in the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) report (see Senate Evidence File No 28). However, they used this to determine the validity of the COT claims. Which men's, when Senator Barnaby Joyce brokered a deal with the John Howard government towards the end of 2005, that they transparently investigate all 14 unresolved COT Cases arbitration claims, which included my using the government archives and any fresh evidence submitted by the 14 Australian citizens he would case his crucial vote in the Senate needed to past the privatisation bill, which he did keeping his side of the deal, but no sooner had he cast that vote the government reneged on that deal, but agreed to use (Senate Evidence File No 28) as evidence to value any of the 14 COT Cases claimants who agreed to accept this fresh deal the government usd a know fundamentally flawed document. That blatantly corrupt action by the government, combined with a government regulator reducing its findings from 120.000 COT-type Telstra customers experiencing to just 50 or more COT-type customer complaints, is one hell of a lie told to its citizens in order to sell off the remaining government ownership of Telstra.

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