We’re excited to announce that the ACCANect Conference will be emceed by renowned freelance journalist and facilitator, Julie McCrossin. Julie has had a distinguished career as a broadcaster with ABC Radio National, ABC TV and Network Ten. She is well known for her warmth, intelligence and commitment to social justice issues.

Read more: MC and keynote confirmed for ACCANect Conference

If like me you’ve got Teflon-coated hands, then dropping your mobile phone and breaking your screen is a regular occurrence. To avoid expensive repair jobs you might consider taking out insurance. ACCAN’s investigator, Xavier O’Halloran, wades through the legal fine print and uses his abacus to crunch the numbers on three of the major insurance plans.

Read more: Should I insure my smartphone?

Planning for our 2016 Conference, ACCANect: Equipping Consumers to Stay Connected, is well underway. We’re curating an exciting program (stay tuned for updates!) which will feature some inspirational and key figures in the telecommunications space. You can now register for the Conference. Remember: if you register before 12 August you can take advantage of early bird rates.

This is a busy time of year for everyone, and before we know it, it will be September and we’ll be welcoming you to our 2016 Annual Conference. While we were workshopping ideas and speakers for this year’s Conference, we got a little nostalgic and wanted to share with you some highlights of our past events.

Read more: Highlights from our past Conferences

ACCAN has a broad membership base that represents groups in the community sector, disability sector, small business owners and more.

Our members are invaluable to the work we do as they are often invited to have their say in our submissions and consultations. Not only that, we look to our members to support ACCAN’s work and to let us know of the issues affecting their stakeholders.

Read more: ACCAN members have their say

We interviewed the new Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO), Judi Jones, for our Winter Magazine to find out more about her past work experience and the future direction of the TIO.

Read more: Our interview with the new TIO, Judi Jones

You’re invited to attend our 2016 National Conference - ACCANect: Equipping Consumers to Stay Connected. Registrations are now officially open.

The ACCANect Conference will be held in Sydney on 14-15 September, 2016. Register before 12th August to take advantage of early bird pricing.

Read more: You can now register for the 2016 ACCAN Conference

We’re pleased to announce the successful Grants for 2016. This year the projects look at a range of communications consumer issues including the ballooning market of mental health apps, the security implications of smart home Internet of Things devices, and ways to assist victims of identity theft.

The ACCAN Grants Scheme funds projects which undertake research on telecommunications issues, represent consumers or create educational tools which empower consumers to derive the greatest benefit from telecommunications products and services.

Read more: Introducing the 2016 ACCAN Grants projects

Telecommunication services have and are rapidly evolving. ACCAN believes the enhancements to quality of life and economic opportunities from being connected should be available to all consumers.

In looking at the future of communication services in Australia it is time for a new focus on consumer needs. The focus to date has centred too much on developments in the telecommunications market and infrastructure rollout. A consumer focus reveals a number of policy gaps that must be addressed now. These are discussed in ACCAN’s new policy position, The Connected Consumer.

Read more: The future of consumer focused communication services

It’s a sad fact of life that one day we will die.

Many of us think of our legacy simply in terms of money in the bank, superannuation, cars, homes and other physical assets, but with more and more of our lives being lived online we have a large digital footprint we could leave behind as well.

Read more: Managing your digital legacy

Today, ACCAN Director of Policy, Una Lawrence, delivered a presentation on ACCAN’s policy outcomes to improve communications services and products for Australian consumers at the Broadband for the Bush Forum.

The speech identified six areas of focus where current policy settings are not delivering for consumers:

Read more: ACCAN presentation at Broadband for the Bush Forum 2016

Last week, Optus announced that it had improved the experience for their small business consumers by offering more specialist team members and having a network of small business consumers.

ACCAN welcomes this announcement. These initiatives are a positive step in the right direction.

Read more: More specialist small business telco services needed

Telecommunications outages happen from time to time. On November 8 2023, Optus experienced a critical nationwide outage on mobile and NBN broadband networks that lasted at least 8 hours and, for some customers, up to 12 hours. As of November 9 2023, Optus is offering affected consumers on eligible plans 200GB of extra data, and free, unlimited data for pre-paid customers on weekends for the rest of the year. For the latest information, see the Optus Outage Response page.

After an outage on its mobile and fixed networks in 2016, Telstra offered its mobile customers free data days as compensation. For the NBN/ADSL outage, Telstra offered a $25 credit to consumers and a $50 credit to businesses who were offline for an extended period of time. This was applied automatically to customer accounts.

Depending on your circumstances, the compensation offered by your telco may not be adequate. If you or your business was affected and suffered losses due to an outage, you may be entitled to seek additional compensation. 

Read more: Compensation for telecommunications outages