Telcos must keep customers and the public informed when there is a major outage or a significant local outage to a telecommunications network.
Under the Telecommunications (Customer Communications for Outages) Industry Standard 2024, telcos are required to provide affected customers with regular updates that are timely, up-to-date, accessible (including for customers with disability or who are culturally or linguistically diverse) and made through a mix of public and direct communication channels.
Specifically, telcos are required to:
- communicate information about the major outage to other carriers and carriage service providers (CSPs), the public, and other relevant stakeholders
- send update notifications to customers every 6 hours in the first 24 hours, then 1 every 24 hours for the duration of the outage.
- put relevant and up-to-date information about the major outage on their website
- use a variety of methods to keep customers up to date, which may include apps, email, SMS, social and other media.
When the rules apply
The rules in the Telecommunications (Customer Communications for Outages) Industry Standard 2024 (the Standard) apply to:
- carriers that:
- use telecommunications networks to supply carriage services to end-users
- detect a major or significant local outage, or
- have been notified by another carrier about a major or significant local outage.
- carriage service providers that:
- supply carriage services to end-users, or
- receive a notification from a carrier about a major or significant local outage.
Defining a major outage
A major outage is when there is an unplanned adverse impact to a telco network supplying carriage services to end-users, which:
- results in an end-user being unable to establish and maintain a carriage service; and
- affects, or is likely to affect:
- 100,000 or more services in operation; or
- all carriage services supplied using the network in a state or territory; and
- is expected to be, or is, longer than 60 minutes.
Defining a significant local outage
A significant local outage is when there is an unplanned adverse impact to a telco network supplying carriage services to end-users, which:
- results in an end-user being unable to establish and maintain a relevant carriage service; and
- is not a major outage; and
- affects or is likely to affect:
- 250 or more services in operation in remote Australia that is expected to last for 3 or more hours
- 1,000 or more services in operation in regional Australia that is expected to last for 6 or more hours.
Requirements for telcos
In a significant local or major outage, telcos must:
- communicate information about the outage to:
- other carriers and carriage service providers
- relevant stakeholders
- the public and customers
- put relevant and up-to-date information on their website
- keep customers up to date using methods including apps, email, SMS, other media, call centres and, for major outages, social media.
Information for ‘relevant stakeholders’
The relevant stakeholders listed below must be provided with the information listed in section 18.
Relevant stakeholders and their contact emails are:
| emergency call person (ECP) for 000 and 112: | |
| ECP for 106: | emergencycontact@relayservice.com.au |
| ACMA: | emergencycallservices@acma.gov.au |
| Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman: | NetworkOutages@tio.com.au |
| Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sports and the Arts: | |
| NEMA: | telco.outage@nema.gov.au |
Outages caused by natural disasters have different requirements
Natural disaster is a defined term in the Standard. It covers natural hazards likely to cause widespread disruption to a community and to the provision of carriage services. Under the Standard, the rules for outages that are caused by a natural disaster are different.
When there is a significant local or major outage that is caused by a natural disaster, telcos must communicate information about the outage to:
- other carriers and carriage service providers
- relevant stakeholders
- the public only (via websites)
- carriage service providers must also make available real-time or near real time assistance to end-users requiring urgent assistance (via phone or live chat).
About the Standard
The Standard was made as part of the government’s response to recommendations made in the review of the Optus network outage in November 2023.
Frequently asked questions
Find out more about the new rules.
When outages affect major cities in Australia, the overlapping networks usually ensure end-users will stay connected. At a minimum, they will be able to make emergency calls from a mobile phone using the emergency camp-on capabilities of mobile networks, which allow emergency calls to be carried on any mobile network.
The Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) divides Australia into 5 classes of remoteness. On their interactive map, select ‘2021 Remoteness Area (RA)’ from the ‘boundary type’ drop-down menu in the top right corner to find out about a particular area.
The carrier that owns the telecommunications network affected by the outage determines when a major or significant local outage has occurred.
Once a carrier detects a major or a significant local outage, it is required to notify other carriers and carriage service providers that they have a commercial arrangement with for the supply of telecommunications services. It is also required to notify the public through its website and social media accounts or websites, and other relevant stakeholders.
Once the CSP has been notified of the major or a significant local outage, it is required to attempt to communicate certain information with its customers through a range of methods of communication. These communication methods must be easy to understand and readily available to persons with disability, or from a culturally or linguistically diverse background or other accessibility requirements.
Carriers do not communicate with customers because they only supply the carriage service to the CSP, and do not have direct relationships with the end-users. However, carriers are still required to put information up on their website if they detect an outage over their network.
Carriers are also required to provide assistance to carriage service providers where reasonably required in order to comply with its obligations to communicate with its customers. This may include providing the notifications to carriage service providers in a form that will be easy to reproduce for its customers.
Communication of outages to emergency service organisations is covered under separate rules.
The rules require CSPs to, as far as is reasonably practicable, make available a contact method that is capable of responding immediately to requests for urgent assistance from a customer.
Requests for ‘urgent assistance’ can include requests from customers supplied with Priority Assistance services.
The Standard applies to all carriage services excluding internet of things data-only services. Services that are not themselves a carriage service but that use an existing underlying carriage service (for example, email, or over-the-top streaming services) are not covered by the Standard. An outage that only impacts email or a streaming service alone, is not an outage covered by the Standard. However, if a customer is unable to use email service or a streaming service because their underlying broadband data service is suffering an outage, then the broadband data service is an outage covered by the Standard.