Former competition tsar Allan Fels has blasted government plans to hand Optus a billion-dollar “bonanza” payday, after last month’s deadly triple-0 outage.

Professor Fels said plans by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to renew 69 existing spectrum licences – publicly-owned airwaves used for broadcasting, mobile services, and satellites – rather than putting them to a competitive auction could hand Optus a massive windfall.

“Optus could stand to earn billions from a spectrum discount by the ACMA”, Professor Fels – who chaired the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission between 1989 and 2003 – told The Daily Telegraph.

ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett told the Telegraph that failure to hold an auction would amount to a “cash-grab for telcos".

ACCAN welcomes the announcement from the Minister for Communications Anika Wells MP that public outage registers will be established in the wake of successive network failures.

ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett discussed what this will mean for the public on Nine News.

ABC Australia national consumer affairs reporter Michael Atkin has produced some excellent journalism on the evolving Triple Zero camp-on issue affecting older Samsung mobile phones.

As our CEO Carol Bennett told Michael, once this immediate Triple Zero safety issue is resolved, it will be important to examine whether appropriate oversight and compliance with Triple Zero obligations were maintained throughout this process.

ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett spoke to ABC News about the Triple-Zero issue affecting older Samsung devices.

She highlighted the pressure this places on consumers who can’t afford a new phone, especially with the 28-day notice period from telcos to update or replace affected devices.