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This week
IN THE NEWS: Welcome to the final Webnews for 2022. ACCAN wishes you all a safe and happy holiday and we look forward to bringing all the very latest Telco news in 2023. We will be back online in late January.
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Have you ever considered how a blind person reads a website or a person with hearing loss enjoys a video? A person with vision impairment uses screen reading software such as Job Access With Speech (JAWS), NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) or VoiceOver, together with high-speed speech output for websites and apps on a laptop or phone. How well they are able to use an online service depends on the way it is designed. A person with hearing loss watches a video and turns captions on. Broadcast video often has built-in captioning, but some apps and websites forget to do this. [auDA media release]
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It's the scam that preys on our emotions and has seen criminals steal at least $7.2 million from 11,100 Australians so far this year – and that's just what's been reported to the consumer watch dog. Cases of the "Hi Mum" scam date back to January and have been widely reported. But the number of victims has increased tenfold in the past three months, according to the latest figures from the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC). [ABC news]
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The price of NBN home broadband services increased for consumers in 2021-22 while NBN Co’s own service standard measurements remained largely unchanged over the same period, the ACCC’s latest Communications Market Report shows. The report looks at key developments in a wide range of telecommunications markets, and the state of competition in the sector. [ACCC media release]
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The ACMA has issued Lycamobile Pty Ltd with a formal warning for failing to publish its complaints handling process on its website. Under telco regulation all telcos in Australia must establish and publish a written process for dealing with consumer complaints. An ACMA investigation found Lycamobile failed to have its complaints handling process on its website for a period of eight months between January and September 2022, putting Lycamobile in breach of the Telecommunications (Consumer Complaints Handling) Industry Standard 2018. Lycamobile has now published its complaints handling process as required. [ACMA]
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NBN Co today released its latest Wholesale Broadband Agreement (WBA5) Consultation Paper to Retail Service Providers (RSPs). The paper considers how NBN Co’s proposed variation to the Special Access Undertaking (SAU) could be implemented, subject to acceptance by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The paper also presents some additional non-SAU-related changes and improvements. [NBN CO media release]
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Research conducted for security vendor Palo Alto Networks has found 92% of Australians want someone to be held liable when a local company is breached in a cyber attack, and half of them think that that person should be a board director or a C-suite executive. And 67% believe these leaders should face fines and jail time if they had failed to take reasonable steps to protect personally identifiable information. A substantial minority – 44% – want tech workers to be held responsible for breaches. [iTWire]
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The Albanese Government has issued updated Statements of Expectation (SOE) to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and the eSafety Commissioner to provide clarity about the Government’s priorities and expectations for how both regulators support Australians in an increasingly digitised world. [Minister Rowland media release]
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6G will encourage a shift towards mixed reality devices and make smartphones irrelevant in the next fifteen years, predicts research firm GlobalData. According to GlobalData, research suggests that the public is already seeing a shift towards mixed reality such as Meta’s Quest Pro virtual reality (VR) headset as the market for the device is set to generate revenues of US$50 billion ($73 billion) by 2030. GlobalData noted however that these devices are obtrusive and will not be likely worn by someone outside of home. [iTWire]
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Australia now has the highest data breach density in the world, with breaches spiking by 489% this quarter (and it's not over yet). Globally, data breaches have decreased by 70.8% while Australian breaches have surged by 1,550%. In fact, Australia's data breach density is 24 times higher than the global average. [iTWire]
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In 2022, the overall trend towards greater digitisation that we saw accelerate in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic has continued, however this year we are seeing some stabilisation in our online behaviours and how we communicate. The ACMA report ‘How we communicate’, revealed that while the ongoing shift toward digital communications has continued, our use of digital platforms remained stable in 2022. Nearly all adults (95%) used a communication or social media site or app in the first half of 2022, and this year we saw our usage consolidating. On average, the number of platforms we used declined, from 5.7 in 2021 to 5.2 in 2022. [ACMA website]
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WebNews #592
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Tel: (02) 9288 4000
Email: media@accan.org.au
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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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