Telcos will have to notify customers “soon” after a major outage and update them at least every six hours, under new industry rules designed to improve the responses of carriers that authorities warn “are not always as responsive as they should be.”
When a telco network incident affects more than 100,000 customers, the new rules – contained in the Telecommunications (Customer Communications for Outages) Industry Standard 2024 – will force carriers to update customers via various channels.
This includes reaching out using call centres, engaging with the media, updating their web sites, and leveraging social media, apps, email, and SMS messaging to keep customers apprised of the status of the incident and the options available to them.
Telcos must also “respond quickly to people who need immediate assistance during an outage,” the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) policies specify, with the rules covering outages that are, or are expected to be, longer than 60 minutes.
The new rules come into effect on 31 December 2024.
They do not apply to natural disasters, which Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland said are being considered with a view to not “interfering with time critical communications from emergency service agencies” – with further reforms due by April.
The new rules come in the wake of a major Optus outage that last year scarred its reputation, caused a CEO change, and cost the company $12 million in fines and over $481,000 in compensation after around 10 million customers were offline for a day.
The incident also sparked a government enquiry and a commitment to overhaul telco Triple Zero and resilience practices, after revelations that more than 2,000 Australians were unable to make emergency calls during the outage.
“Recent examples have shown that telcos are not always as responsive with information during a major outage as they should be,” said ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin in announcing the new policies.
The new rules “will ensure that telcos keep the lines of communication open, and that people impacted by a major outage aren’t left in the dark about what’s going on and when their service might be back.”
Are telco customers happier or not?
The new rules come as regulators and telcos work to spin newly announced customer complaints figures as a challenge and an achievement, respectively.
Newly released first-quarter Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) data about telecommunications complaints, for example, showed that 30 per cent of complaints referred to the ombudsman – 3,389 in total – weren’t resolved by the telco.
“It is concerning that such a large volume of problems referred to telcos remain in dispute,” ombudsman Cynthia Gebert said, suggesting that telcos had become efficient at resolving simple matters but were struggling to deal with more complex problems.
“Customers are contacting my office because of patchy service and dropouts, telcos dragging their heels when it comes to fixing something, and poor customer service experiences,” Gebert said.
Despite the “positive sign” that complaint numbers declined overall during fiscal 2023-24, Gebert said, the new figures show them rising them again – an outcome she called “disappointing” because customers are “reporting the same persistent problems.”
Australians lodged a total of 13,541 complaints about phone and internet services during the quarter, up 4.6 per cent on the same period in 2023 – and of these, 1,443, or 10.6 per cent, related to situations where customers had no phone or internet service.
Despite the resurgence of complaints and the impact of recent major outages, Communications Alliance CEO Luke Coleman pointed out the importance of seeing the forest for the trees – noting that “complaints are at their lowest level in two decades.”
“Telcos have done an amazing job of improving customer service in recent years,” he said, noting that the TIO was handling 167,000 complaints per year in 2018 and that this had dropped to under 57,000 – confirming that telcos were “lifting their game”.
