Published on 24/03/2016 by Punchmedia

Compensation Options Open for Small Businesses

Both big and small businesses may receive compensation from Telstra after its fourth major disruption to mobile services in the past six weeks. Australia's biggest phone and internet provider's most recent mobile issue saw a national outage that stopped up to 507,000 customers from making mobile phone calls for around two hours. But despite offering two days of free mobile downloads as an apology for two of its previous outages, Telstra will not be doing it again. Telstra's first major outage took place in early February and affected over 3 million customers, followed by a smaller outage that hit 500,000 pre-paid customers. This was followed by a major outage that knocked 8 million customers off the network for around 3 hours last week and the most recent phone call outage on Wednesday. Both small and big business owners have complained via various mediums that outages had caused losses in profits and productivity. A Telstra spokesman said the company was actively accepting requests for compensation from business owners who called in, but added there was no guarantee they would be granted. ''We will consider compensation for business customers on a case by case basis,'' the spokesman explained. Telstra relies on its reputation for having the best networks to justify charging its customers more. Telstra's rivals are using the opportunity to win over its disgruntled mobile users. Vodafone Australia has offered new customers switching from rival networks one free month of mobile services. The deal will last a week, until 5pm on March 29. Telstra has 16.9 million mobile customers, compared with the 9.37 million at Optus and 5.44 million at Vodafone Hutchison Australia. The Telecommunications Services subdivision has been transformed over the past five years, as consumers’ and businesses’ preferences for mobility has come at the expense of wired services, which have traditionally generated higher margins across the subdivision. Growth in mobile revenue has consequently been offset by a decline in wired revenue. Overall subdivision revenue is expected to fall at a compound annual rate of 0.7% over the five years through 2015-16, to be worth $41.3 billion. Telcos have enacted price cuts over the period, usually by offering greater usage within existing payment plans. Subdivision revenue is projected to fall at a slower rate of 0.2% in 2015-16, indicating that price competition between major players is beginning to ease. Meanwhile, higher volumes and greater economies of scale have limited the decline in profit margins arising from the costly development of the NBN. * With AFR

Checkout our listings here
Ab Assets/Broker Avatar

punchmedia

Curtis is a leading expert in the business-for-sale industry, serving as a senior content creator at anybusiness.com.au.

With a career spanning over fifteen years, Curtis has accumulated extensive knowledge in the domain of business sales, acquisitions, and valuations. His deep understanding of market dynamics and his ability to translate complex industry jargon into accessible insights make him a trusted resource for entrepreneurs and business owners looking to buy or sell businesses.

Related articles

02/02/2014 by gavinLower
Mature workers who’ve been made redundant are investigating opportunities to work for themselves through franchises, a leading Australian franchise business says. “We’re seeing more and more people in the situation where they are made redundant and want some certainty with what they want to do in the future,” says John Stanton, Australasian franchise recruitment manager at mobile coffee business Cafe2U. He told StartupSma...