Australia’s peak communications consumer advocacy group, the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), has today announced 3 projects that it will fund through the 2024 Round of its Independent Grants Program.
The ACCAN Independent Grants Program funds projects to enable research on telecommunications issues, represent telecommunications consumers, or create educational tools which empower consumers to understand telecommunications products and services and make decisions in their own interests.
Read more: ACCAN awards three new communications consumer grants
ACCAN recently provided a joint submission, together with CHOICE and Consumers’ Federation of Australia (CFA), to the Treasury’s consultation on Revitalising National Competition Policy (NCP).
New research from the University of Melbourne and Swinburne University has found that 82% of households in the NBN first release site of Brunswick, Victoria, think the NBN is a good idea.
University of New South Wales, School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications
Grant round: 2016
Amount: $50,000
Read more: Inside job - Security and privacy threats for smart-home IoT devices
Working from home has become an environment that many of us have become familiar with recently. However, home offices often aren’t set up as effectively as usual places of work. This means you may
not be able to guarantee access to the internet all the time, or that you may not have the speeds you need to work efficiently. Below are some steps you can take to ensure that you have the best possible working from home set up.
Read more: Handling outages while working from home
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Ms Carol Bennett has officially commenced her role as Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) as of Monday 8 July. This follows a prior announcement of her appointment to succeed Andrew Williams, who departed earlier this year.
Ms Bennett is a highly respected executive with extensive experience in senior management and board roles within the health and aged care sector. Importantly, Ms Bennett has an established reputation for effective national advocacy on behalf of consumers. She joins ACCAN from the Alliance for Gambling Reform, where she was CEO since 2021.
ACCAN recently submitted to the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) consultation on proposed changes to the ECS Determination and the Draft Telecommunications (Emergency Call Service) Amendment Determination 2024 (No.1).
The Mobile Matters report by project coordinator Leo Fieldgrass details the findings from a year-long youth participatory action research and advocacy program that involved over 100 Melbourne VCAL students. The student researchers documented the challenges faced by them and their peers and made recommendations to industry for changes to better support young consumers.
Students from the Youth Advocates Project by the Brotherhood of St Laurence have a clear message for telcos and regulators: "We want you to understand what it's like to be a young mobile consumer: we don't just use mobiles for mucking about. We use them for jobs and shifts, school, parents, and emergencies".
Australian National University, Research School of Management
In partnership with IDCare, and the University of the Sunshine Coast, Centre for Human Factors & Sociotechnical Systems.
Grant round: 2016
Amount: $44,965.50
Read more: Understanding Consumer Identity Theft Risks Across Communications Media
NetThing 2021 Speech by ACCAN Acting CEO – Andrew Williams
- CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY –
Building trust is a slow process. One that takes time, ongoing effort, and maintenance.
Conversely, losing trust can happen in an instant. One bad call, one misstep, and years of cultivating trust can be in jeopardy.
According to the 2021 Edelman Australia Trust Barometer, social media companies are the least trusted of all industries, falling well behind telecommunications, and even financial services.
The 2021 report shows that technology companies were the only industry to lose trust from 2020-2021, rather than gain it from Australians.
As the consumer voice for communications consumers, these statistics are not shocking or surprising to ACCAN.
We engage with consumers and advocates daily who express concern about a wide range of issues from misinformation spreading online that impacts their communities, to cyber abuse, to being unaware of their rights when using digital platforms.
Read more: NetThing 2021 - The role of consumers in building trust in digital platforms
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