Australians are complaining less about their telecommunications services – but with a new complaint lodged every 4 minutes last year, the industry ombudsman has warned that “essential” telecommunications services still have a lot of room to improve.

Peak industry body the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) received 130,942 online and phone contacts during the 2023-24 financial year, the agency revealed in its latest annual report, with 56,718 complaints referred to telecommunications providers – down 14.6 per cent on the previous year.

Despite solid reductions in complaints against major telcos Optus (down 28.4 per cent), Telstra (down 15.7 per cent), iiNet (down 10.5 per cent) and TPG (down 9.9 per cent), complaints surged against the likes of Dodo Services (41.4 per cent), Tangerine Telecom (78.9 per cent), and Uniti Retail (159 per cent).

Despite receiving 24,655 complaints about mobile services, the TIO noted that the overall volume of mobile complaints was down 22.1 per cent year-on-year – while the share of complaints relating to network issues grew from 39.9 per cent to 44.2 per cent.

Victorians and Queenslanders complained the most, lodging 2.4 complaints per 1,000 people, while Tasmanians (1.5) and Northern Territorians (1.3) were seemingly the least discontented despite having arguably less telecommunications infrastructure.

“Telecommunications services are essential services,” ombudsman Cynthia Gebert said, “as important to our quality of life and health and wellbeing as the electricity and water in our homes.”

Interruptions to those services – such as last year’s major Optus outage, which cut services to 10 million people – reinforce the depth of their importance, she said, noting that “we’ve observed the consequences of being without telecommunication services, and the challenges that being disconnected can bring.”

The impact of the Optus outage recently drove a government inquiry to recommend measures such as large-scale roaming during major interruptions, and the use of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites for mobile network failover in a change that telecommunications analyst Paul Budde has called “a game changer for connectivity”.

Out of the woods, or stuck in the weeds?

The figures suggest NBN Co’s ongoing shift away from problematic fibre to the node (FttN) broadband and copper phone services, towards fibre to the premises (FttP), is improving reliability for many customers, with the share of complaints about NBN Co network issues dropping by 8.8 per cent year on year – a much bigger decline than the 2.2 per cent drop in network-related complaints for other services.

Despite the downward trend in overall complaint numbers – the combined number of mobile and landline complaints dropped from 9,931 to 6,646 over the past three years – Gebert warned that overall figures still showed that “consumers remain frustrated by the same issues” including poor customer service, delays in fixing problems, and service and equipment fees.

For example, one rural resident’s telecommunications provider took eight years to fix his landline service and – despite his property having a Priority Assistance service because his wife has a serious medical condition – failed to provide an interim service even though he had no mobile coverage at his property as a backup.

Reporting of several issues did increase during the year, with 6,730 complaints relating to a lack of phone or internet service – up 5.6 per cent year on year – and 5,512 complaints about ‘inadequate fault testing’, which surged 36.1 per cent and was the only one of the top ten mobile service complaints that did not decline.

Complaints about internet services, by contrast, surged – with increases in inadequate fault testing (46.3 per cent), delays establishing a service (34.5 per cent), providers taking too long to act or not acting at all (23.5 per cent), and reporting no phone or internet service (21.9 per cent).

Combined with a 70.8 per cent overall increase in the number of ‘equipment fault’ complaints, the figures suggest an underlying hastiness among telcos that still have a lot of room for improvement.

The TIO is also eyeing future improvements after the November completion of Phase 1 of its Project ECHO technology transformation – which commenced in April 2021 and includes enhancements such as a cloud-based complaints management platform, redesigned online complaint form, member portal, consumer portal to improve complaint visibility, and trials of AI technology to keep up with demand.

These enhancements have become embedded into what TIO chair Michael Lavarch called “a business-as-usual state” within the TIO, which is now updating Project ECHO’s roadmap for Phase 2 and will soon launch a new Consumer Online Services portal.

“Telecommunications providers must rise to the challenges of cyber security and service reliability,” Gebert said, calling Project ECHO “an overwhelming success” but warning that “we must continue to adapt to the changing landscape… to ensure that consumers have recourse when they have a problem.”