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

The superfast broadband access service (SBAS) is a declared wholesale access service that Retail Service Providers (RSPs) can use to supply fixed line superfast broadband services to end users. In July 2021, the ACCC extended the SBAS declaration to regulate non-NBN fixed line superfast broadband services until July 2026. This means that RSPs have the right to access the SBAS. The ACCC is now holding an inquiry regarding the terms and conditions relating to access of this service.

In our response to the ACCC’s discussion paper, we recommended that:

Read more: Superfast broadband access service – access determination inquiry discussion paper

Digital inclusion ensures that no one is left behind as we move towards an increasingly digital future. For Social Inclusion Week 2015, we thought we'd outline why digital inclusion is vital for all Australians.

While many of us have smartphones and access to the internet at home, there are some consumers who don't. Two issues often cited as barriers to digital inclusion are affordability and a lack of digital literacy.

Affordability divide

Research from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that in 2012–13, 98 per cent of households with a household income of $120,000 or more had internet access, compared to only 57 per cent of households with a household income of less than $40,000, suggesting an 'affordability divide' when it comes to broadband.

Read more: Why digital inclusion matters

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

ACCAN’s Indigenous Steering Committee has provided a response to the National Indigenous Australian Agency’s consultation on the development of an Indigenous Digital Inclusion Plan (the Plan). The Plan is intended to focus on access, affordability and digital ability as the three key elements of digital inclusion. It will also consider what data is needed to measure improvements in First Nations digital inclusion.

ACCAN’s Indigenous Steering Committee has recently been formed to guide ACCAN’s work to close the digital divide for First Nations peoples. Dr Heron Loban of Griffith University chairs the Committee, which is comprised of First Nations peoples with expertise and interest in telecommunications issues.

Read more: Indigenous Digital Inclusion Plan Submission

All across Australia Schoolies celebrations are about to begin for many year 12 students. While travelling for Schoolies, or celebrating at parties, young people will undoubtedly have their smartphones with them along the way.

Below we've put together some tips for young people to ensure they use their smartphones safely.

Avoid risky behaviours

What happens at Schoolies doesn't always stay at Schoolies - especially if it's recorded in an image or video on a smartphone.

Read more: Schoolies, sexting and smartphone safety

 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

ACCAN recently made a submission to the eSafety consultation on the Draft Restricted Access System Declaration 2021. The Declaration updates the 2014 Declaration to align with the changes in the Online Safety Act 2021. ACCAN broadly supports the Draft Declaration. However, we did reiterate our concerns that aspects of the enforcement mechanisms are unlikely to result in the intended outcome of greater community protection.

Read more: eSafety Restricted Access System (RAS) Declaration

Last week, ACCAN's Disability Policy Advisor, Wayne Hawkins, presented at the NDIS New World Conference 2015 in Brisbane. The theme for the Conference was: Disability in the 21st century.

The event featured speakers from a range of organisations including Apple, National Disability Services, Ernst and Young and the National Disability Insurance Agency.

Wayne sat on the panel of the Universal Accessibility session, facilitated by Sean Fitzgerald, Director C3 Solutions. Other panellists included James Thurston from G3ictr, Daniel Hubbell from Microsoft and Dr Scott Hollier from Media Access Australia.

Read more: Why is accessible ICT important?

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

ACCAN recently made a submission to the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications consultation on the Online Safety (Basic Online Safety Expectations) Determination 2021 exposure draft. The consultation provided an opportunity to comment on the government’s expectations on how online services should pro-actively act to protect Australians from online harm and abuse.

Read more: Online Safety Act (Basic Online Safety Expectations) Determination 2021

The Bureau of Communications Research (BCR), a unit established last year in the Department of Communications and the Arts, was asked by the Government to consider the funding of the National Broadband Network (NBN) to regional Australia. The initial policy arrangement saw nbn funding the services, covering any losses internally from other areas of the network. The Government policy now is to distribute the cost further than the nbn network.

The BCR has produced a consultation paper presenting their preliminary findings. Below is a summary of these findings.

Read more: BCR consultation on regional NBN funding

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) is putting industry on notice that it will be closely watching the impact of revisions made to the Telecommunications Consumer Protections (TCP) Code. The Code registered with the ACMA replaces the existing Code from today.

"The TCP Code provides significant consumer protections. ACCAN will be keeping a close eye on how the industry performs under the revised Code," said ACCAN CEO, Teresa Corbin. "We want to see the debate shift from just being about deregulation to the more nuanced 'better regulation.' If we don't then consumers will begin to suffer due to reductions in community safeguards.

Read more: ACCAN warns industry not to drop its game

ACCAN recently made a submission to the eSafety Restricted Access System (RAS) consultation. The consultation sought feedback on how the new RAS can best balance both the policy objective of keeping children and young people safe online, while not placing unnecessary financial or administrative burden on industry.

Read more: eSafety Restricted Access System (RAS) Discussion Paper

Australians are spending more time on their mobile phones and we're using more mobile data than ever before.

According to the ACMA Communications Report 2013-14, in the quarter ending June 2014, Australians downloaded 38,734 terabytes of data on mobile devices – a 97.3 per cent increase when compared to the same quarter a year earlier!

With the introduction of 4G, our data needs are forecasted to grow even more. Because of this, it's important to take into account how your provider counts your data and how much they charge for excess data.

Read more: What you need to know about mobile data

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) says that consumers should be aware of the high fees charged for calling directory assistance numbers. Today Telstra has introduced a $0.50 charge for directory assistance calls from landlines and other telcos charge for these calls often outside of the included plan value. Telstra customers on the Pensioner Discount are exempt from the $0.50 charge for directory assistance calls. See ACCAN's tip sheet for directory assistance call charges from a range of landline and mobile providers.

Wherever possible, consumers should use free, online methods of accessing this information. Directory information can be accessed online from the White Pages website or smartphone app or even by doing a simple Google search for the company or service required. However, ACCAN is concerned that call charges to directory assistance numbers may unfairly impact on consumers who don't have internet access or who aren't comfortable using the internet.

Read more: Consumers should be aware of charges for directory assistance calls

The Federal Government has sought feedback on changes to Telstra’s carrier licence conditions. The proposed changes would increase Telstra’s level of reporting in regard to voice services that sit outside of NBN’s fixed line footprint.

Consumers living outside NBN’s fixed line footprint are heavily reliant on voice services provided over Telstra’s network, so it is important that the reliability of the services is transparent. It’s also essential that there is visibility of Telstra’s performance in meeting its obligations under the Universal Service Obligation regime, and how well it is meeting the Customer Service Guarantee standard.

Read more: Telecommunications (Carrier Licence Conditions – Telstra Corporation Limited) Amendment (Regional...

The 2015 edition of the P3 CommsDay Mobile Benchmark Australia shows improved results from the three carriers tested – Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. Now in its second year, the benchmark compares the three network operators against each other and also against their scores last year.

ACCAN congratulates P3 and CommsDay on this important initiative because it provides consumers with independent benchmarking so they can make informed decisions. Improved consumer decision making is one of ACCAN's Policy Priorities for 2015-16.

The benchmark measures smartphone voice and data performance and is based on weeks of extensive testing around the country. The tests measure voice call quality, success rates, download and upload speeds, website access and video streaming performance.

Read more: Australian mobile benchmark shows improved network coverage

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) congratulates the telcos involved in the TIO and Communications Alliance quarterly Complaints in Context report for their efforts in reducing the number of complaints for the April-June 2015 quarter. The latest report shows that Vodafone, Telstra, Optus, amaysim and Pivotel had 6.5 TIO complaints per 10,000 services in operation (SIO) for the quarter, a decrease of 9.7 per cent on the previous quarter, and a 14.5 per cent drop when compared to April-June 2014.

Three out of the five telcos recorded lower complaints when compared to the previous quarter. This is a great result and is good for consumers. It's also positive to see smaller provider, Pivotel joining the Complaints in Context reporting.

Read more: ACCAN congratulates telcos on decreasing complaints

The ACCC sought views on proposed amendments to the Audit of Telecommunications Infrastructure Assets – Record Keeping Rules. The record keeping rules require carriers and carriage service providers to keep records on the location of their infrastructure and provide this information to the ACCC. ACCAN is supportive of the amendments to these rules which ensure that the information collected is kept up to date with industry developments and assists the ACCC in its regulatory functions.

Read more: Audit of Telecommunications Infrastructure Assets – Record Keeping Rules Consultation paper

The internet offers exciting opportunities and experiences for kids and teens. But for some parents it can seem like a dark forest fraught with danger.
While there are great aspects of technology, it should be remembered that the internet could potentially expose children to harmful content, cyberbullying or contact with strangers.

To coincide with Stay Smart Online Week, we're sharing our top tips for online safety for kids and teens.

How to approach cybersafety

It's more than likely that your kids are using computers or tablets regularly at home and at school. In fact a 2013 study from the ACMA found that 95 per cent of eight to 11 year olds had accessed the internet 'in the last four weeks.'

Read more: Cybersafety for kids and teens

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) has made a submission to the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications in response to an issues paper regarding a new scheme for captioning on subscription (pay) television.

In our submission, ACCAN supported the proposal to simplify the current Pay-tv rules which are overly complicated and do not provide any clarity about which programs will be captioned.

 ACCAN strongly supports the current legislated mandate that subscription television providers caption 100 per cent of their programming by 1 July 2033., As such, we did not support the proposed averaging of caption targets nor the proposed freezing of annual captioning increases.

Read more: Captioning Rules for Subscription Television

After experiencing a traumatic marriage breakdown, Michelle^* fled with her children to a safe location expecting to be free of the violence they had experienced. Over the ensuing months she found herself encountering her ex-husband in all sorts of locations unexpectedly, and started to face the abuse all over again. He then moved to sending abusive text messages, so Michelle changed her number, only to start receiving them again soon after.

Unable to understand why this was happening, Michelle sought the help of an IT savvy friend, only to discover her children had tracking software on their phones and that her computer also had spyware which her ex-husband had been using to keep track of her. This is known as 'technology-facilitated stalking and abuse.'

Read more: Technology-facilitated stalking and abuse

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) has formed an alliance of organisations representing the interests of Australians who are Deaf, hearing impaired and those who rely on captions for information, to bring attention to the growing issue of inaccessibility of online audio/visual content being posted to websites. Specifically, there are concerns around the amount of video content that is being auto-captioned on YouTube as the vast majority of these videos are not being reviewed for accuracy or readability.

An ad hoc survey of Australian Government websites found a range of problems with video captions, including videos with no captions, video captions with minor misspellings and videos with completely incomprehensible captions. Go to ACCAN's Facebook page to view a photo album containing examples of incomprehensible captioning. The websites of many Australian politicians, political parties and Government agencies feature these inaccessible videos.

Read more: Online video captions must be accurate and readable