Priority assistance

• What is Priority Assistance?
• ACA Review of Telstra's Priority Assistance Service
• Further information

What is Priority Assistance?

Priority Assistance is a service designed to help persons with diagnosed life-threatening medical conditions who depend on a reliable, home telephone service to be able to call for assistance when needed. Customers receiving such a service are referred to as 'priority assistance customers'.

This means that priority assistance customers are entitled to faster connection and fault repair of their telephone service and a greater level of reliability.  The timeframes for connecting a service or repairing a fault for a priority assistance customer is 24 hours in urban and rural areas and 48 hours in remote areas.  If a priority assistance customer experiences two or more faults in a three month period, the phone service must be tested by the carrier.

Who offers Priority Assistance?

Telstra, AAPT and Primus offer priority assistance services.

Telstra

Telstra is the only carrier required to provide priority assistance services to its customers as a condition of its licence. Under its licence condition, Telstra is required to have an effective policy for offering priority assistance services to persons with a life-threatening medical condition.

Telstra's arrangements for priority assistance are set out in Telstra's Priority Assistance for Individuals policy. This policy is appended to Telstra's universal service obligation standard marketing plan, which is available on the ACMA website or on Telstra's website at: www.telstra.com.au/universalservice.

ACMA monitors and reports to the Minister on Telstra's compliance with its licence condition.  Telstra's performance against the priority assistance policy can be found here.

General information about Telstra's priority assistance service can be found here.

AAPT and Primus

AAPT and Primus both offer priority assistance services consistent with the Communications Alliance Ltd (formerly ACIF) Industry Code (ACIF C609:2003 Priority Assistance for life-threatening medical conditions) which was registered by the ACA in October 2003.

Click here for more information about the Priority Assistance Industry code

The Code was designed to establish consistent, industry wide arrangements for providing assistance to residential customers with life-threatening medical conditions. It specifies the minimum standards regarding information provided to customers for suppliers who do not offer priority assistance.

The ACA (ACMA's precursor) reported priority assistance performance information on AAPT and Primus and can be found here.

ACA Review of Telstra's Priority Assistance Service

The ACA (ACMA's precursor) completed a Priority Assistance review in November 2004 and made a number of recommendations regarding the operation of Telstra's priority assistance service. The review was requested by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, in June 2004. The review examined Telstra's procedures and practices to ensure they are effectively delivering priority assistance to customers in a manner consistent with the government's priority assistance objectives.

The government has accepted most of the recommendations which will result in some changes to Telstra's priority assistance policy and licence conditions aimed at improving the service for existing and new priority assistance customers.

A copy of the report is available below in Word or PDF:

Further information

A copy of the fact sheet on priority assistance service is available from ACMA's website.

Further information can be obtained from ACMA's Industry Monitoring Section.

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