Customers with a disability or medical condition

If you have a serious medical condition, you can get priority assistance for your landline (home phone). This means, if your home phone service has a fault, your telco treats it as urgent.

Only Telstra must offer priority assistance to customers. It is optional for all other telcos, so ask your phone provider. If you have priority assistance, your telco must:

• connect your standard landline service faster than other customers
• fix faults within 24 hours in urban and rural areas or within 48 hours in remote areas
• test your phone service if you have 2 or more faults in 3 months.

Your telco is only required to meet these timeframes for customers who have applied and been assigned priority assistance. Talk to your telco as soon as you think you might be eligible for priority assistance.

Eligibility

You are eligible if you have a landline and someone in your household has a medical condition that:

• could get worse so fast it becomes life-threatening
• a phone may be needed to call an ambulance or talk to a medical professional to save the person’s life.

You may need proof from a doctor that you are, or someone in your household is, being treated for a medical condition that is eligible for priority assistance.

It includes people:

• with severe asthma
• at risk of anaphylaxis
• with cardiovascular illnesses
• with a high-risk pregnancy
• with life-threatening hypoglycaemia or epilepsy
• on respirators or dialysis at home
• with severe mental health disorders.

The full list of medical conditions is in the appendix of the Priority Assistance Code.

You may also be eligible if you have another serious condition and live alone or in a remote location.

How to get priority assistance

You can ask if a telco offers priority assistance before you become a customer. The telco must tell you if they do not offer priority assistance, and which telcos do offer it.

You can ask your current telco if it offers priority assistance and how to access it. Your telco will help you to apply.

Keep your details updated

You need to tell your telco if:

• you move to a new address
• you change your name
• the medical condition of the person in your household changes and you are no longer eligible for priority assistance.

If you need to use special equipment with your standard phone service, you can find information on which phone would be right for you on the Accessible Telecoms website.

Your telco must offer their products and services in a way that meets the Disability Discrimination Act 1992. Speak to your telco to find out if they have a product that may be suitable for you. Telco sales staff are trained to advise people on the telco’s offers and to help you understand the products you buy. 

See the rules all telcos (except Telstra, which follows rules in its carrier licence) have to follow in the Priority Assistance Code.

The TCP Code has rules that telcos have to follow about selling products based on customers’ needs.