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

ACCAN provided a response to the Federal Government’s consultation on the Grant Guidelines for the Regional Connectivity Program Round 2. The program aims to use a place-based approach to telecommunications infrastructure investment that will respond to local priorities and maximise economic opportunities and social benefits for regional communities and businesses.

Read more: Regional Connectivity Program Round 2 Grant Guidelines

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) has launched a guide for consumers who will receive internet services over nbn’s Sky Muster satellite. The guide will be a useful tool for consumers in these areas to help them get connected to broadband services. Sky Muster services were officially launched today.

ACCAN welcomes the launch of Sky Muster services as they will deliver improved broadband services to premises across Australia, primarily in regional and remote areas including the islands that make up Australia. Consumers in these areas have experienced poor to no broadband services, with many facing difficult situations created by the lack of adequate services and exorbitant costs.

Read more: ACCAN launches consumer guide for NBN Sky Muster satellite

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

The Regional Telecommunications Review occurs every three years and is an opportunity to assess the issues impacting regional, rural and remote consumers of telecommunications services.

Since the last Review, regional communities have experienced natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic, both of which have highlighted and heightened the need for access to reliable, resilient and affordable telecommunications services. Whilst there has been significant investment in telecommunications infrastructure in recent years, ACCAN’s submission highlights that there remains room for improvement when it comes to accessing high quality services and having the digital skills to benefit from those services.

Read more: 2021 Regional Telecommunications Review

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) has launched a research report that found some consumers are losing around 23 per cent of their data to a megabyte rounding rip off. Megabyte rounding happens when a single ‘data session’ is rounded up to the nearest megabyte. A data session can be thought of as each time your smartphone talks to the internet, whether this is to watch a video, update your Facebook or receive an email. As some data sessions are very small, using only a few kilobytes, some consumers are on plans that are using up their data more rapidly. ACCAN is advising consumers to avoid these poor value plans.

Read more: ACCAN research finds that megabyte rounding might be stealing your mobile data

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

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is developing a Statement of Expectations (SoE) for the telco industry to guide the way it identifies and responds to customer vulnerability. The SoE sets out goals, outcomes and examples for telcos to adopt in different areas that impact consumers experiencing vulnerability, including customer service, selling and contracting, and disconnection.

ACCAN’s submission strongly supports the goals expressed in the SoE and makes a number of recommendations to expand the scope and improve the effectiveness of the SoE.

Read more: ACMA Customer Vulnerability Statement of Expectations

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) has released the 2nd Edition of its Community Consultation Guide in time for Round 2 of the Federal Government's Mobile Black Spot Programme (MBSP).

Mobile coverage is a key issue for consumers, particularly those who live in regional, rural, and remote areas. Improving mobile coverage is also one of ACCAN's key work priorities.

Read more: ACCAN Launches Updated Community Consultation Guide for Round 2 of the Mobile Black Spot Programme

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

ACCAN has prepared a submission to the Communications Alliance regarding Telecommunications Industry Code DR C666-2021, Existing Customer Authentication.

This code is intended to protect consumers against fraudulent activity and outline how telecommunications providers with ensure that activity related to a customer’s account is properly verified and is actually authorised by the customer or their authorised representative.

Read more: Communications Alliance Industry Code: Existing Customer Authentication

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) is holding its Meet the People Forum at Parliament House in Canberra today to highlight important telecommunications consumer priorities for 2016 to Federal Parliamentarians. The Forum will bring the voice of consumers to Canberra, to talk about their experiences with fixed line connection, fault repair and reliability; expectations of broadband performance that are mismatched with actual experience; and the challenge of affordability as a barrier to getting and staying connected.

ACCAN is proposing three key policy initiatives to help address these consumer priorities: a reformed Customer Service Guarantee (CSG) and service reliability benchmarks; independent broadband performance monitoring to inform the market and guide consumer choice; and a review of the current Centrelink Telephone Allowance to match the needs of low income consumers today. These issues and others make up ACCAN's 2015-16 Policy Priorities.

Read more: Reliability, broadband performance and affordability are telco consumer priorities

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

Local number portability allows consumers to transfer – or ‘port’ – their local landline telephone number to a new service with a different telco provider. This allows consumers to switch providers without losing their number, which supports competition in the telco market.

Local number porting can be a complicated technical process. The Local Number Portability Code (the Code) outlines the procedures that telcos must follow in relation to local number porting. It is important that the Code is thorough and fair so that consumers do not lose their local number in the process, or face lengthy delays when switching providers.

ACCAN’s submission to the Code review makes recommendations to amend the Code to improve consumers’ experiences of local number porting, in line with changes in the market and providers’ technical capabilities. We also recommend that consumers’ rights during the local number porting process should be reviewed and strengthened.

Read more: ACCAN feedback on Local Number Portability Code

Research from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) has found that broadband speeds and performance levels are leaving consumers disappointed with their services. The lack of reliable information on broadband quality for consumers to use when choosing a plan means that it is difficult to make the right choices.

ACCAN's survey found that quality is the third most important factor for consumers in choosing a broadband service, behind price and monthly data allowance. However, consumers appear to be confused by the market. Respondents were split in their opinion on whether providers differ in the level of quality they offer, with 58 per cent of participants agreeing with the statement "You get the same speeds at home as advertised in your plan."

Read more: Broadband speeds and performance leaving consumers disappointed

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

On 13 July 2021, the Australian Government opened consultation on options for regulatory reforms and voluntary incentives to strengthen the cyber security of Australia’s digital economy.

ACCAN made a submission in response to the Strengthening Australia’s cyber security regulations and incentives discussion paper. ACCAN submitted that:

Read more: Cybersecurity Regulations and Incentives

 The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) welcomes Macquarie Telecom's initiative to publish its customer Net Promoter Scores (NPS) online. Prospective customers will be able to access this before signing up with the company. NPS is a measure of the proportion of customers who say they would recommend a business to others.

"We welcome this move by Macquarie Telecom and encourage the industry to follow suit and publish Net Promoter Scores in real time," said ACCAN Deputy CEO, Narelle Clark. "Giving current and prospective customers access to this sets a new benchmark for transparency in the industry. If presented in a simple, easy to use way, it will help consumers make more informed choices when deciding which provider to use.

Read more: Telcos should publish Net Promoter Scores

You may have noticed that we’ve launched our brand new website. We’ve been working on the new website for quite some time and we’re very excited to finally have it up and running.

The new website is more user-friendly, mobile-friendly and of course, it is accessible to consumers who use assistive technologies like screen readers.

With our new website, we’re well placed to provide consumers with the latest news, information and consumer resources.

The website is now divided into two main areas: Helpful Consumer Information and ACCAN’s Work.

Read more: We’ve launched our new website

In July 2021 Treasury released exposure draft amendments to the Consumer Data Right rules and explanatory materials for consultation (version 3 of the rules).

The Treasury’s exposure draft amendments changed the CDR Rules to “reduce barriers for participation in open banking” and “increase participation in the CDR by data recipients and consumers” by:

Read more: Consumer Data Right rules amendments (version 3)

New research from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) found that telecommunications packages for small businesses are not adequately aligning to small business needs in today's digital economy. The research report, Informing Small Business, consists of a study examining the current small business market offerings and a survey of 200 small businesses to assess their behaviour and experiences. The report was funded by ACCAN and authored by Market Clarity.

The recent massive shift toward a more mobile workforce has seen many small business operators blend their home and work lives together. They work on the go and would benefit from being able to access their broadband connections from locations other than their office, but many of the offerings are inflexible for those who have embraced the digital economy. Small businesses need a reliable internet connection to do business and therefore it's imperative that service faults be quickly resolved. However, the research found that for the most part service guarantees are not offered to small businesses. Around half of the small businesses surveyed said their phone and internet plans offered no service performance guarantees.

Read more: Telco plans not working for small business

Have you received a text message like the one below informing you that you’ve subscribed to a subscription service and will be charged a fee for that service?

These types of messages don’t come from your telco and may result in charges being added to your phone bill. These charges are for third party services which means your telco is allowing another provider to sell content to you which you pay for on your phone bill. What you are buying can be phone apps, pay per view videos, games and other content. They can be one-off charges or ongoing subscriptions.

Read more: What to do if you get third party charges on your phone bill

The Consumer Data Right, also known as the CDR, is a new law designed to give consumers greater access and control of their own data and more readily compare and switch between products and services, which encourages competition between services providers.

The CDR allows consumers to direct their data to be shared from their existing service provider through a secure online system with a new provider of their choice. To receive CDR data, data recipients need to become accredited.

Read more: Consumer Data Right telecommunications sectoral assessment

Recently ACCAN has heard reports of consumers having to replace their NBN backup batteries earlier than expected, sometimes while under warranty.

Prior to October 2014, it was mandatory to have a backup battery in an NBN box for services in fibre to the premises areas. It is now an optional feature.

Not all consumers need to have a backup battery. You only need to have one if other services are reliant on your connection, or if you have no alternative access to emergency services (e.g. via mobile services) when there is a power outage. These services include medical alarms and fixed-line telephones.

The recent reports suggest that many consumers are finding that their backup battery has needed replacing sooner than expected. ACCAN is concerned that poor quality batteries may cost consumers extra money if they keep needing to be replaced. The process of replacing a battery may be difficult for some consumers. We are concerned that some may require the assistance of a technician when replacing the battery which would also add to the costs.

Read more: Confusion over NBN backup batteries