Action on telco consumer protections: April to June 2025

Safeguarding Triple Zero (000) emergency call services

When a telco network outage occurs, it can affect emergency services, public safety and vulnerable people. 

We have a focus on the compliance of carriers, carriage service providers and Emergency Call Persons. This helps ensure calls are carried to emergency services.

We have been monitoring compliance with recent amendments to the Emergency Call Service Determination. The updates commenced on 28 October 2024, and require providers to identify and cease supplying service to mobile phones that are unable to call Triple Zero (000). 

On 24 April 2025, we made new rules to ensure telco customers will be better informed during network outages. Under the rules, which commenced on 30 June 2025, telco customers must be updated during localised outages, including:

• when an outage occurs
• the locations affected
• the likely cause of the outage
• the types of services impacted
• estimated timeframe to resolve the issue. 

The rules also improve general complaints-handling processes, including during network outages. 

To further improve regulatory protections for telco consumers in the event of network outages, we also made rules to provide greater certainty that in the event a telco network suffers an outage, calls to Triple Zero (000) will be carried by an alternative telco network that is available to carry the call. Telcos are also required to share real-time information about outages to police, fire and ambulance services, and to report to the ACMA. These amendments to the Emergency Call Service Determination were made on 30 April 2025, for commencement on 1 November 2025.

The new rules followed extensive consultation on draft amendments to:

• the Customer Communications for Outages Standard
• the Emergency Call Service Determination
• the Consumer Complaints Handling Standard.

Supporting telco customers in financial hardship

Compliance with the Financial Hardship Standard is an ACMA priority. New rules came into effect on 29 March 2024.

The Standard improves safeguards for customers experiencing financial difficulty by requiring telcos to:

• establish and promote their financial hardship policies
• identify customers experiencing financial hardship
• provide a better range of options for assistance
• prioritise keeping customers connected. 

After auditing 25 telcos’ compliance with the Standard, we investigated 5 telcos and found that 4 had not complied with one or more of the obligations in the Standard, including identifying and communicating with financial hardship customers and training of staff.

Outside of the reporting quarter, we announced on 23 July 2025 that we had issued formal warnings to Optus Mobile, Origin Energy, Skymesh and Swoop Telecommunications. The 4 telcos failed to comply with rules designed to protect customers struggling to pay their internet and phone bills.

We put the remaining 20 telcos in the audit on notice regarding their compliance. This resulted in changes to their practices to achieve better outcomes for their customers. 

We also made direct compliance contact with an additional cohort of 5 telcos, leading to improvements to their websites and payment assistance policies.

Supporting telco customers experiencing domestic, family and sexual violence

Telecommunications are central to everyday living. However, for people experiencing or trying to escape domestic, family or sexual violence, these services can be a lifeline. They play a vital role in helping those affected by violence to stay connected, seek help and plan for safety.

On 6 June 2025, we made the Telecommunications (Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Consumer Protections) Industry Standard 2025. This followed a Direction from the Minister for Communications to make the instrument.

Under the new standard, telcos will need to provide people affected by domestic, family and sexual violence with safer, more secure and reliable telco services. They will need to help keep victim survivors safer by: 

• protecting their privacy
• reconnecting phone services quickly
• only contacting people using agreed methods
• hiding sensitive information – like calls to 1800RESPECT – from appearing on bills.

Help will need to be easy to access and staff will need to be trained to recognise and assist at-risk consumers, doing so with care and respect. Telcos will also have to work with experts to get their policies, procedures and training right.

A limited number of provisions will commence on 1 July 2025, with a delayed and staggered commencement for other provisions. 

Broad consultation was key to our work. Before making the standard, we consulted widely with a range of consumer groups, experts, the telco industry and various government agencies. We also consulted with other stakeholders, including advocacy groups, people with lived experience of domestic and family violence, First Nations Australians, people with a disability and regional communities. 

Combating phone scams

We continue to disrupt scam activities and protect Australians. Our quarterly Action on scams, spam and telemarketing report includes the measures we have taken after our investigations.

We opened 5 investigations into telco compliance with:

• Legislation that requires telcos to comply with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) scheme.
• Emergency Call Service Determination rules that require telcos to maintain their networks and ensure emergency calls are carried to the Emergency Call Person.
• Rules relating to Statutory Infrastructure Providers' notification requirements to the ACMA under Part 19 of the Telecommunications Act.
• Rules relating to providing accurate and up-to-date customer data to the Integrated Public Number Database (IPND) under the IPND Code.
• Mobile Number Pre-Porting Identity Verification Standard rules that require telcos to do customer identity checks to confirm Rights of Use and prevent unauthorised porting of mobile service numbers.

We completed 4 investigations into telco compliance with:

• Legislation that requires telcos to comply with the TIO scheme.
• Emergency Call Service Determination rules that require telcos to notify the Emergency Call Person in a timely manner about outages that impact emergency calls.
• Record keeping rules relating to consumer complaints data.
• Scam Code rules to disrupt, report and share information on scam activity in Australia.

Our compliance and enforcement outcomes for the quarter included:

• Telstra paying an $18,780 infringement notice and entering into a court-enforceable undertaking after it mistakenly disabled the connection to the emergency call relay service used by people with hearing and speech impairments. Our investigation found the 106 emergency call service number was inadvertently made unavailable for 12 hours and 46 minutes between 5 and 6 July 2024 following a server migration process.
• Opticomm paying a $150,240 infringement notice for failing to properly notify us of planned and completed broadband infrastructure installations in a number of new real estate developments. Our investigation found that between May 2023 and May 2024, Opticomm failed to provide relevant notifications to the ACMA within the required timeframes on 184 occasions.
• Starlink being given a formal warning for failing to comply with telco industry rules relating to complaints record-keeping. Our investigation found that Starlink failed to provide complaints reports to us within required timeframes on 4 occasions between October 2023 and July 2024.
• TPG being given a formal warning for failing to notify Telstra – the entity responsible for the Triple Zero (000) emergency call service – in a timely manner that an outage had affected emergency calls from TPG’s network. Our investigation found the TPG network was down for an hour and 20 minutes between 12.40 am and 2 am on 15 August 2024. It left most of its 4G mobile customers unable to make voice calls, including emergency service calls. The majority of calls made to Triple Zero (000) during the outage were able to ‘camp on’ to other networks.
• Circles.Life paying a $413,160 infringement notice and entered into a court-enforceable undertaking after failing to comply with telco customer identity verification rules. Our investigation found that on 26 occasions, Circles.Life failed to properly verify the identity of the person requesting the transfer prior to porting the mobile service number. We also accepted court-enforceable undertakings from the telco.

We monitored compliance with 7 court-enforceable undertakings and one remedial direction during the quarter. These set out the actions telcos must take to improve their compliance with telco laws, with the aim of improving consumer outcomes. Our monitoring did not identify any compliance issues. 

View our enforcement actions for breaches of telco laws.

We started 32 compliance assessments and completed 37 compliance assessments into telco compliance with consumer safeguards during the quarter. These assessments are an important source of industry intelligence. They resulted in:

• investigations
• direct compliance contacts with telcos
• ongoing telco monitoring
• industry education.

We released the telco complaints report for the January to March 2025 quarter.

Across the industry, complaint resolution times fell on average from 6.2 days in the October to December 2024 quarter, to 6.1 days in the January to March 2025 quarter. TIO escalation rates increased from 6.9% to 7.1%.

In the January to March 2025 quarter, the provider that received the least complaints per 10,000 services was Vonex (4), while Circles.Life received the most complaints per 10,000 services (152).

The providers that resolved complaints the fastest were Moose Mobile, Dodo, Amaysim Mobile, Circles.Life, Starlink and Woolworths Mobile (one day on average). The provider that resolved complaints the slowest was Skymesh (20 days on average).

The provider with the lowest TIO referral rate was Lebara (1.8%), and the provider with the highest TIO referral rate was Skymesh (121.6%). We are working with Skymesh to understand why its TIO referral rate is so high.

Our Consumer Consultative Forum (CCF) is a key advisory group that assists us to carry out our responsibilities to consumers. It also enables consumer organisations and advocates to engage with us on issues affecting telco consumers. It consists of ongoing and set-term members.

CCF members met on 25 June 2025 to discuss plans for compliance monitoring and education material for the DFSV Standard, updates to the ACMA’s consumer focussed web content and our scams prevention work. Members also discussed issues relating to financial hardship, including:

• inappropriate sales practices
• refusal of payment assistance
• problems faced by rural, regional and remote consumers
• service degradation following the 3G shutdown
• complaint fatigue.

The next CCF meeting will be held on 12 November 2025.

The Numbering Advisory Committee (NAC) brings together the telco industry, consumer organisations and government to give us advice on telephone numbering issues. 

On 3 July 2025, we met with the NAC to discuss the development of a proposed numbering work program following the review and remake of the Telecommunications Numbering Plan 2025. The purpose of the numbering work program is to consider and take forward a range of issues that were identified during the review. Some issues relate to modernising the Numbering Plan and broader regulatory framework to better reflect:

• changing and emerging technologies
• the services these enable
• the use and demand for numbers.  

The next NAC meeting is planned for late 2025. 

The Scam Telecommunications Action Taskforce (STAT) brings together representatives from key government agencies, telcos, law enforcement and other sectors to combat phone scams. This primarily involves calls, SMS and phone fraud. It informs our scam reduction activities and associated regulatory responses.

We convened the STAT on 1 April 2025 to provide key stakeholders with a platform to discuss the threat environment and scam reduction initiatives.

Check the accessibility file for the information shown in the chart above. 

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Accessibility file: Action on telco consumer protections – April to June 2025