Public Consultation Toolkit - Civil Service College

Public Consultation Toolkit 29 30 Public Consultation Toolkit
Case 9:
Contract period and early termination charges
for telecommunication services offered to consumers
Agency/country:
• Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), Singapore
Background:
• In December 2008, IDA proposed to issue Guidelines on the maximum contract period
and early termination charges (ETC) that providers of residential fixed-line, mobile and
broadband services could impose on consumers. The Guidelines specified that:
- The maximum contract periods should not exceed 24 months; and
- Consumers who signed contracts that were longer than three months and who
terminated their contracts before the end of their contract period should not have to pay
a fixed ETC. Rather, ETCs should decrease over time.
• In proposing the Guidelines, IDA considered that long contract periods and excessive ETCs
may unfairly penalise consumers and hinder them from legitimately terminating services
and switching operators.
• IDA issued the final Guidelines in December 2009 and issued a press release to explain the
Guidelines. IDA worked closely with the media to ensure that the public was made aware of
the changes that would be put in place.
• The final Guidelines were accompanied by an explanatory memorandum setting out IDA’s
views and responses to the key comments received from the earlier consultation, and the
considerations behind IDA’s decision.
• IDA provided the operators with a three and a half month lead time to implement the
Guidelines. Over the next few months, IDA continued to provide guidance to both operators
as well as consumers on the implementation of the Guidelines.
Learning points:
• For issues in which public feedback and support is important, it is necessary to proactively
engage the mass media to ensure that any consultation is widely publicised.
• It is also important to ensure that technical policies are clearly explained and the materials
made available are easily understood by the wider populace.
• As part of the overall stakeholder management strategy, for decisions which may adversely
affect any stakeholders, it is important to engage the stakeholders and provide some form of
advance notification prior to announcing the final decision.
Consultation process:
• IDA conducted a public consultation on the proposed Guidelines on 23 December 2009,
which lasted four weeks.
• To ensure the issues were understood by the wider public, IDA avoided using industry jargon
in the consultation paper, but tried to explain the issues and the proposed solutions in
simple clear language.
• IDA worked closely with the media to explain the issues in the consultation.
Outcomes:
• IDA received 13 sets of comments – three from telecommunication operators and 10
from individual consumers. Consumers were overwhelmingly in favour of the proposed
Guidelines, while responses from the telecommunication operators were mixed but
generally negative. The media published two articles and an editorial on the proposed
Guidelines.