Isps Look To Take On Telstra In Court
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday March 8, 2001
Big business, be nice to little customers, because revenge in the era of the Web can be easy and quick.
In the early 1990s it took 50 small businesses several years to mount the Casualties of Telstra (COT) action over failed services they said ruined their businesses but it has taken a small Darwin Internet service provider just weeks to gather support for a possible class action against Telstra.
Mr Trevor Power set up the antitelstra.com Web site in January, after he and his wife closed the Internet business they spent $100,000 and six months trying to set up. Within days he had more than 100 emails from other small ISPs with similar complaints.
Mr Power got the idea for antitelstra.com from another site, telstraexposed.com. That site was spun off last May from a more general activist Web site called cyberjustice.com.
Its creator Mr John Tucznski's beef with Telstra goes back to a business that went bad in the early '90s. Through the site he claims to have been involved in numerous recent out-of-court settlements on behalf of individuals and small businesses fighting Telstra.
Mr Tucznski said Telstra offered to buy the site to close it down. Telstra declined to comment on the claim.
Mr Power's antitelstra.com Web site has a more specific industry agenda. His company, Number One ISP, was set up in April 2000 using Internet infrastructure from Vivanet, which used the Telstra Internet backbone.
But according to Mr Power, the Internet connections Vivanet provided never worked and while problems were tracked down to the Telstra exchange, they were never fixed. Vivanet declined to comment as the case is before the Darwin Magistrate's Court.
Through antitelstra.com Mr Power has discovered he is not alone in either his dispute with Vivanet or Telstra. He said he is now in contact with 15 other ISPs interested in joining a class action against Vivanet. Another 60 ISPs want in on a class action against Telstra, according to Mr Power.
``We couldn't afford to do it alone, but if everyone pays $1,000 to $2,000 we can." Mr Power said he had had strong interest from legal firms to represent both cases on a no-win, no-fee basis.
With the support gained via the site, Mr Power is also looking at establishing an ISP co-operative.
``There's protection for Internet users against ISPs and there's protection for large ISPs that have a direct relationship with carriers due to their buying power, but there's no protection for small ISPs," he said.
The existing customer numbers would give the co-op buying power similar to Australia's largest ISPs. He claims he is in advanced negotiations with ``Telstra's main competitors".
Mr Andrew Maiden, a spokesman for Telstra Regulatory, said he was aware of both Web sites. ``If we think we can solve a problem identified on a Web site we would." But he added that while Telstra had met Mr Power ``and made representations to Vivanet on his behalf", Telstra does not have a contract with Number One ISP and could take it no further.
© 2001 Sydney Morning Herald
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