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This week
IN THE NEWS: Affordability and digital inclusion measures welcomed by advocates, what Australians expect from digital platforms, and more.
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In light of rapid increases to the cost of living, the peak body for communications consumers has welcomed new measures announced in this week’s federal budget to improve the affordability of communications services and boost digital inclusion across the nation. This echoes calls made by the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) to establish a concessional broadband product for households on low incomes. [ACCAN]
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Digital media platforms are fundamental to how Australians communicate and live their daily lives. To better represent the consumer voice, ACCAN conducted a survey to find out more about what Australians expect from digital platforms. According to our research, many people find it difficult to change their privacy and safety settings of websites and apps, think that digital platforms need to do more to protect users from scams, and want more interoperability and data portability to give them more choice between the digital platforms they use. [ACCAN]
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ACCAN recently commented on the Treasury’s Exposure draft legislation to enable action initiation in the Consumer Data Right. The action initiation scheme allows trusted third parties to make requests with the same authority as if they had come directly from the consumer. Our submission expressed our support for the introduction of action initiation into the Consumer Data Right (CDR) and suggested that the scheme should be developed and implemented in close consultation with consumers and their representatives. [ACCAN]
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The government has invoked a Covid-era response mechanism, bringing together federal, state and territory agencies to coordinate on the worsening Medibank data breach. Minister for cyber security Clare O'Neil said the national coordination mechanism (NCM) was activated on Saturday. [iTNews]
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CBA said it will offer discounted 4G and 5G mobile SIM plans to its retail and business customers as it deepens its partnership with telecommunications provider. The bank said retail customers who register using a CBA credit or debit card as their online bill payment method can receive 30 percent off a mobile SIM plan for the first 12 months. [CRN]
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"So far this year, Australians have lost an amazing $336 million to scams," the head of Telstra's cyber security team, Narelle Divine, told A Current Affair. "If we look at scam phone calls, we blocked over 200 million of those last year," the security boss said. "We stop around 1500 suspected scam SMSs each and every minute." [A Current Affair]
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NBN Co is conducting lab trials of a system designed to raise an alarm before third-party damage to fibre can occur, which could lead to fewer unplanned outages. The network operator is conducting a three-month trial of a service called DigitalAsset from FiberSense. The system detects vibrations at particular frequencies along the fibre, and uses AI to decide whether there are nearby activities that might cause accidental damage to a fibre. [iTNews]
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The federal government laid the foundations for its tech jobs push in Tuesday’s Budget but industry and science groups want more detail and have criticised a $4 million cut to a women’s reskilling program. The new government saved $3.9 million over two years in the budget by scrapping the Supporting Women’s Mid-Career Transition into the Tech Workforce program from the Coalition’s Digital Economy Strategy. The budget did provide $5.8 million for women in STEM programs but this money is also being used to review the impact of the programs. [Innovation Aus]
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TPG Telecom has completed a 5G-enabled 12-month cattle counting trial alongside other partners for Tamworth Regional Livestock Exchange. Located in northern NSW, the trial involved the automated, real-time counting of cattle being loaded from and onto trucks for auctions. TPG Telecom worked on the project with a number of collaborators, which included Nokia with its 5G network equipment, the University of Technology Sydney which developed the cattle-counting machine model and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Professional Services for support with edge computing and machine learning. [Australian Reseller News]
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Tel: (02) 9288 4000
Email: media@accan.org.au
Web: accan.org.au
Twitter: @accan_au
Facebook.com/accanau
LinkedIn: accan.org.au/LinkedIn
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Although we take care to direct subscribers to sites with accurate and reliable content, we advise that ACCAN is not responsible for the content within external sites and has no control over the views, services or information contained therein. Information contained on external sites may not necessarily reflect ACCAN's policy, standards or beliefs.
The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network's representation of residential and other consumers' interests in relation to telecommunications issues is made possible by funding provided by the Commonwealth of Australia under section 593 of the Telecommunications Act 1997. This funding is recovered from charges on telecommunications carriers.
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