When you acquire any telecommunications service, for example a pre-paid mobile phone or even access to the internet, there will be terms and conditions which detail the service provider's conduct and also your rights and obligations as a customer.
Large organisations and corporations are able to negotiate with service providers regarding services and prices. Most individuals and small businesses however are not able to negotiate, rather they select from a range of plans with pre-set terms, conditions and prices. In these circumstances individuals and small businesses do not have an individual contract with the service provider, instead they accept the terms and conditions set down in a document formally called a Standard Form of Agreement (SFOA).
SFOAs are pre-set contracts. Customers do not sign SFOAs, but agree to them by the act of buying the service.
Many industries use SFOAs, especially for high volume or small transactions where it is not practical to have individual contracts.
The term Standard Form of Agreement is a formal term used in legislation. Most service providers refer to their SFOA in their own way, for example, as 'our standard terms and conditions' or 'our customer terms'.
Irrespective of what it's called, if a service provider uses a SFOA they must abide by rules and industry codes which govern what is in the SFOA, how customers are informed about the SFOA and a customer's rights if the SFOA is changed. These rules and industry codes have been developed to ensure that the relationship between a service provider and its customers is fair, is as balanced as possible and is consistent across the telecommunications industry.
Some service providers offer a wide range of products; fixed and mobile voice services, internet and services supported by new 3G technologies. As a consequence SFOAs can be very long and complex. An ACMA Determination, the Telecommunications (Standard Form of Agreement Information) Determination 2003 requires a provider to publish a summary of each of their SFOAs. Summaries are expected to outline the main terms of the SFOA while not exceeding four pages in length.
Service providers must give a summary to each new customer and must tell existing customers at least every two years how they can obtain a summary relating to their service. In addition a whole copy, or a specific part, of a customer's SFOA, or a copy of the summary must be provided free of charge when requested by a customer.
The 2003 Determination also deals with how providers inform customers about changes to the SFOA that may adversely affect them. A recent amendment to the 2003 Determination, the Telecommunications (Standard Form of Agreement Information) Amendment Determination 2006 was introduced to ensure that customers are given reasonable notice of adverse changes.
Previously it was permissible for customers to be advised of changes with only three days notice, by way of indirect notice such as a public announcement in a newspaper. The amendment now puts the onus on the provider to ensure that customers are given reasonable notice of changes which are expected to adversely affect them.
The amended Determination does not specify what reasonable notice is but puts the onus on providers to give reasonable notice given the nature of the change, how such notice will be provided to customers, the length of time remaining before the change occurs and any other matter which is relevant.
In determining what is reasonable notice, ACMA considers that providers should look to the notification provisions set out in the Consumer Contracts code for guidance.
You can get more information about telecommunications contracts from ACMA's contacts, terms and conditions fact sheet.