Compensation for long-term outages will come into effect on 1 July 2017
As of 1 July next year, providers will be obliged to reimburse customers for TV, internet and telephony disruptions that last longer than 12 hours. Minister Kamp of Economic Affairs introduced the amendment to this law on Friday.
In the event of TV, internet and telephony disruptions lasting longer than 12 hours, customers will soon be entitled to compensation of at least one euro. If the consumer has a monthly subscription and the disruption lasts 12 to 24 hours, the provider must compensate for at least one-thirtieth of the monthly costs. For every 24 hours that the outage continues, the compensation increases by one-thirtieth. With a monthly subscription of 30 euros, the amount increases by 1 euro after every 24 hours, calculated from the moment the malfunction has already lasted twelve hours. “Providers can of course distinguish themselves from their competitors by paying higher compensation to customers,” says Minister Kamp.
Prepaid customers are also entitled to compensation: for them this is 50 cents for every 24 hours without a connection. Providers can choose not to offer money but to compensate in another way, for example with extra call credit. However, the customer must expressly consent to such an offer.
Providers can take the initiative to reimburse themselves or work with application forms. On these forms, customers can, for example, indicate their choice for a compensation scheme in cash or in kind. For business customers, too, providers are obliged to compensate in the event of long disruptions.
The compensation scheme applies to both national and regional disruptions, but only subscribers residing or located in the area where the effects of the disruption occur are eligible. Anyone who is in the hotel or at work in an area other than his hometown is missing the point. The government has opted for this in order to keep the implementation of the scheme simple.
Providers can only invoke force majeure in exceptional cases: for example if the failure is caused by floods, earthquakes or terrorist attacks. If the outage is due to maintenance work, excavation work, power failures, human errors or hardware or software problems, the providers must still pay compensation.
The amendment to the Telecommunications Act has been published in the Government Gazette. More information can be found in the Explanatory Memorandum.