The TCP Code isn’t just a guideline. It’s a legal document, and like many legal documents it includes its own dictionary of defined terms. To properly understand what the Code is saying, it’s essential to use the Code dictionary.
How do you know when to check the dictionary? Simple: If a word in the Code starts with a capital letter, that’s a pointer that it has a special meaning … that you’ll find in the Code dictionary.
Understanding legal dictionaries
Legal documents use their own dictionaries to save space, and to simplify drafting.
So, instead of saying:
Suppliers must issue a Bill to a Customer, or former Customer, within 10 days that are not a Saturday, Sunday or gazetted public holiday in the location of the relevant Supplier after closure of the Billing Period
the TCP Code says:
Suppliers must issue a Bill to a Customer, or former Customer, within 10
days that are not a Saturday, Sunday or gazetted public holiday in the location of the relevant SupplierWorking Days after closure of the Billing Period
and its dictionary says:
Working Day means a day that is not a Saturday, Sunday or gazetted public holiday in the location of the relevant Supplier
So that’s 17 words saved from the original paragraph. And since ‘Working Day’ is used a total of 33 times in the Code, that’s a whopping word saving of 561 words!
That’s great, but it can be a problem if people reading the Code aren’t aware that ‘capital letters point to specially defined words’.
And there’s another thing to be aware of
There’s a famous quotation from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll:
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
Dictionaries in legal documents are like that. If a particular contract says that Telephone Service means a fixed or mobile voice service but excluding any VOIP-based service then that is what it means … for the purposes of that contract.
Another contract might say that Telephone Service means a fixed or mobile voice service including any VOIP-based service. For the purposes of the second contract, that’s what the words mean.
Neither contract is trying to say what a telephone service is in the ‘real world’. Neither of them is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Each of them is only saying what the reader should understand the words to mean when they are reading that contract.
So you can see how important the dictionary is
If Telco A signs a contract to sell Telco B ‘all its customer contracts for Telephone Services’ it could make a huge difference whether VOIP services were included, or excluded, from the sale. And to know whether they were ‘in’ or ‘out’ you’d need to read the definition of ‘Telephone Services’.
An example from the TCP Code
The TCP Code creates rules involving Standard National Mobile Calls. The fact that each of those first letters is capitalised lets us know they are given a special meaning by the Code’s dictionary:
Standard National Mobile Call means a mobile voice telephone call from a Supplier’s mobile service to another Supplier’s mobile service (off-net) during peak time where the calling and receiving parties are in Australia
If you didn’t read that definition, you might not be aware that the kind of calls being referred to are only ones that are:
- off-net, and
- at peak time, and
- made within Australia.
So, when you quote the price of a 2 minute Standard National Mobile Call in your advertising, you can’t use on-net pricing. But you’d only understand that if you had read the definition in the Code dictionary.
But there’s a couple of exceptions to the rule
We know you didn’t want too much information, but this isn’t complicated. In fact, it’s just common sense.
In clause headings, the fact that a word is capitalised doesn’t necessarily mean it has a special meaning in the Code dictionary. It could just be capitalised because that is the style used for headings in the document.
For example, clause 6.1 is headed: Credit Management Information. ‘Credit Management Information’ isn’t a specially defined term. It’s just capitalised because it’s in a heading. (But ‘Credit Management’ is defined in the Code dictionary.)
Also, the first word in a sentence is almost always capitalised under normal rules of English grammar. So, the fact that a capitalised ‘The’ starts many clauses in the Code doesn’t mean that ‘The’ has a special, defined meaning. It’s just normal English.
There are lots of defined terms in the Code, and it’s good to scan them all
Take a look at Chapter 2 of the TCP Code, called Definitions and Interpretation. That’s what we’re calling the ‘Code dictionary’. It has 13 pages of defined terms, and remember:
- Capital letters at the start of words are a pointer that a term is in the Code dictionary.
- When a term is defined by the Code, that defined meaning is what it means whenever you read it in the Code.
- It doesn’t matter that you might think the word means something different when you use it in everyday talk. Inside the Code, a defined word means what the Code says it means, neither more nor less.
