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This week, the Coalition and Labor both announced that if elected they would commit extra funding to the Mobile Black Spot Programme. The announcement that an extra $60 million in funding will be allocated to the Programme is welcomed by ACCAN.
Mobile coverage is a key issue for consumers, particularly those who live in regional, rural, and remote areas. This is clear from the more than 10,600 mobile black spots identified in the Programme so far. Improving mobile coverage is one of ACCAN's ongoing key work priorities.
Read more: Extra funding for Mobile Black Spot Programme
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The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) has identified five communications consumer priorities for the 2016 Election. These are: communications affordability, future consumer protections, broadband performance monitoring, accessible ICT procurement and accessible programming on TV.
Read more: ACCAN identifies communications consumer priorities for the 2016 Election
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The government should adopt ICT equipment and software procurement practices that ensure people with disability can use them.
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To find out more about the communications policies of the major political parties we have posed questions to them on these communications consumer priorities and other important issues. When the answers to our questions are available we will post them on this webpage. More information on communications consumer priorities is available on our Election webpage.
Read more: Federal Election questions to major parties
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ACCAN is calling for a whole-of-government procurement policy for accessible ICT to enable Australians with disability to have greater opportunity for economic, social and community participation.
The Australian Commonwealth Government does not have a comprehensive procurement policy for the purchase of accessible information and communications technology (ICT). The negative roll-on effects of this policy gap have significant implications for the whole Australian community. In particular the ramifications of this ongoing policy gap continue to disadvantage and exclude some of our most vulnerable citizens with disability.
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Australians with disability need greater access to television. ACCAN is calling for the implementation of Audio Description on free-to-air television and increased captioning across commercial television networks.
Australians with disability continue to struggle to have meaningful access to television.
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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
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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
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The Broadcasting Services Act should be amended to ensure people with disability can reliably access all free-to-air television.
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A system to provide independent monitoring of broadband services should be introduced.
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The Customer Service Guarantee should be updated to include internet and new reliability measures.
