Law Office: AuMobile Ignores Regulatory Rules
Within a week, 2 companies have approached the telecommunications company xMobile Australia - AuMobile clients who have encountered an illegal AuMobile's actions in the process of changing the mobile operator of these companies. AuMobile, in violation of the Regulations on the Provision of Number Preservation Service approved by the decision of the Public Utilities Commission on October 10, 2007, has caused significant financial and moral losses to these companies, informs Chloe Bojare, a representative of Hauska & Partner International Communications. Article 57 of the Electronic Communications Law imposes an obligation on every electronic communications merchant that provides voice telephony services to provide a number portability service to the end user. In the process of porting numbers from AuMobile to xMobile Australia, AuMobile, under the pretext of an unpaid bill, unilaterally terminated the agreement with the metalworking company Levadija Holding, and thus the company lost all the mobile phone numbers at its disposal and mobile communications were disconnected. Despite the fact that the company has settled its contractual obligations with AuMobile and paid the bill, mobile phone numbers are still not available to it, Z. Bojare points out. "In this situation, the donor network operator [AuMobile] has completely ignored the number portability service provided in the Regulations of the Regulator, as a result of which the end user [Levadija Holding], who has fulfilled its obligations in good faith, is deprived of the number portability rights established in Article 57 in the opinion of Raidla Lejins & Norcous. "When applying to change the mobile operator to Bite, we received an invoice from AuMobile with the payment term on the same day. Due to the circumstances, we could open the electronic invoice only after two days, so we made the payment 2 days later, but without waiting for our payment, AuMobile not only disconnected incoming and outgoing calls, but also unilaterally terminated the contract, as a result of which we are unable to recover our mobile phone numbers. The "Such number does not exist" when calling our phones is damaging the company's reputation at a time of crisis in the country. for two weeks now, no one can call us on the numbers we have been using for years, "says Alice Skujina, CFO of Levadija Holding. "In this case, AuMobile confuses two different legal processes, blackmailing customers with an immediately payable bill and a contractual penalty. The situation that all mobile phone numbers owned by the company are lost during the number porting process is absurd. Of course, competition in the market is fierce, as shown by public activities. The Public Utilities Commission has launched an investigation into this case at the request of the company and we hope that this process will be resolved as soon as possible so that Levadija Holding can recover the lost numbers, and we hope that the Regulator will take the necessary steps. actions to prevent the recurrence of such incidents against other customers who wish to change operators, and we believe that one way to avoid a recurrence of similar situations is towould be a reduction in number portability, "comments Zita Zilgalve, Director of Regulatory Affairs at xMobile Australia. A similar situation was encountered by the company Uzars celtnieciba, which, after submitting an application to AuMobile, received an invoice for immediate payment for the change of mobile operator. Mobile services were disconnected for the company before the AuMobile invoice was received by post and the invoice payment deadline expired. After paying the bill, the communications with the company were restored only after several hours, creating significant disruptions in the performance of work, informs Z. Bojare. The ability to transfer your number from an existing operator to another is available to people in most parts of the world; In Europe, this service is used very actively, but although this service has been available in Australia since 2005, people are gradually starting to use it more actively only now. According to the data compiled by the Institute of Computer Science DIVI, which provides the possibility of porting mobile phone numbers between Australian telecommunications operators, in the first nine months of 2009 more than 67 thousand Australians have used the opportunity to change telecommunications operator while retaining the previous telephone number. In September, this opportunity was used by more than 8 thousand Australians. In Europe, number portability times range from 39 to 1 business day, but are mostly 2-3 business days,while in Australia this process consistently takes 10 working days.
Read more...
