🚨 ACCAN welcomes ACMA taking Optus to court over the 18 Sept 2025 Triple Zero outage, alleging it failed to connect emergency calls 1,005 times. Penalties don't stop the next outage. Australia needs reliability standards and domestic mobile roaming. www.acma.gov.au/articles/202...

Coverage maps have been live since 30 June. ABC News finds they still don't match reality. One man under 3km from a tower gets a signal the standard calls "no coverage", while his map says moderate to good. Prediction isn't the same as coverage. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07...

AI is entering the services Australians use every day. ACCAN welcomes the govt's new AI guardrails: a legislated digital duty of care, privacy reform, and stronger consumer protections. The test now is delivery and enforcement. l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http...

Friday's Senate inquiry heard the 8 July #Telstraoutage could have been avoided: Telstra didn't act on a known software fix. Telecommunications is an essential service and should have enforceable reliability standards, the way energy already does. www.accan.org.au/accan-s-medi...

Your phone roams onto any network the moment you land overseas. Drive four hours inland in your own country and it won't. This is the same technology, Australia just doesn't require it. ACCAN is calling for domestic mobile roaming: www.accan.org.au/accan-s-posi...

Writing in the Sydney Monring Hearld, ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett says Australia's telecommunications system is facing a crisis of confidence. Two Telstra outages in a day demonstrate the need for reform. ACCAN wants enforceable standards and domestic mobile roaming. www.smh.com.au/national/two...

After yesterday's Telstra outage, ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett told ABC News that Telstra should face a very significant penalty, "particularly when they're the custodians of Australian safety." ACCAN wants enforceable mobile reliability standards. Full story: www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07...

ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett on 3AW after today's Telstra outage: telecommunications should be an essential service, like electricity, water and gas, with enforceable reliability standards and penalties when networks fail. Full interview below.

🎙 ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett on ABC Brisbane on the three telco changes now in effect: standardised mobile coverage maps, outage registers, and the SMS Sender ID Register verifying branded texts to fight scams. www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

📰 ACCAN in @abcnews on the new mobile coverage map rules. CEO Carol Bennett: we've had a "war of definitions" over what counts as coverage. From now, telcos must map to one standard: good, moderate, basic or no coverage. A welcome step forward. 🗺️ www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06...

Now in effect: unregistered SMS sender names show as "Unverified." Businesses must register now. Consumers get a clearer signal to spot impersonation scams. www.acma.gov.au/sms-sender-i...

75% of Australians rely on their mobile as their only way to reach Triple Zero. Between 8 and 10% reported that they or a family member could not connect to Triple Zero due to a mobile outage, confirmed across two surveys. Full report out now: www.accan.org.au/consumer-sen...

New mobile coverage map rules came into effect today. We asked people in Sydney what they think. The verdict: clear colour contrast works, grey-on-grey doesn't. And you shouldn't need a legend to know if your phone will work. 📱 On the new rules: www.acma.gov.au/clearer-mobi...

From 30 June, telcos must use the same 4 coverage categories: good, moderate, basic, no coverage. Comparing providers just got a lot easier. #MobileCoverage #ACCAN #NFF www.acma.gov.au/clearer-mobi...

4 in 5 Australians had a problem with a digital service last year. 2 in 3 who complained were left dissatisfied. Australians are losing $497 million a year with nowhere to turn. ACCAN supports a Communications Ombudsman. It's time. www.tio.com.au/reports/some...

This morning, Australians woke up to another major outage, this time from Vodafone. Reports began from around 7:30 am AEST, with users across the country unable to make calls, send SMS, or access mobile data.

Two thirds of regional and remote #FirstNations families don’t have home internet. This is what the digital gap looks like. Read the new report edited by Daniel Featherstone, ACCAN Board member and RMIT researcher: apo.org.au/sites/defaul...

📬 A new ACCAN WebNews is out! This week: SMS Sender ID Register deadline approaching, TIO data shows stall in complaints progress, new women's online safety research, and ACCAN's final NBN submission to the ACCC. Read and subscribe: buff.ly/veW1zvS

The #TIO's Q3 complaints data is out. 6,739 mobile complaints. Financial loss up 32.7%. Financial hardship up 25.3%. 60 complaints from people who couldn't reach Triple Zero. Read the full report: www.tio.com.au/reports/quar...

From 1 July, possible scam texts will show as unverified under a new SMS Sender ID Register. Australians lost $18M to text scams in 2025. ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett on ABC Perth explains what it means for Australians. Businesses need to register at ACMA now: www.acma.gov.au/sms-sender-i...

Australia’s proposed digital duty of care will ask social media platforms to actively prevent harm.

Australia wants social media to be ‘safe by design’. What does that actually look like?

theconversation.com

Two surveys. Three months apart. Similar result. Between 8 and 10% surveyed report they or a family member being unable to reach Triple Zero due to a network outage in the last 12 months. Australians want the Triple Zero system to keep them safe. www.accan.org.au/consumer-sen...

ACMA moves at very different speeds depending on the matter at hand. Nine months on, the Optus Triple Zero investigation continues. Yet it found time to use coercive powers against a 14-person consumer group whose research telcos were publicly attacking. We stand by our research.

The Government is reviewing the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, a critical opportunity to strengthen ICT accessibility for 5.5 million Australians living with disability. ACCAN is calling for reform. accan.org.au/policysubmissions

📬 A new ACCAN WebNews is out! This week: ACMA confirms spectrum at $7.32B, telcos warn of more price hikes anyway, ACCAN sets the record straight on #TripleZero research, and the @RegionalHub crisis hits national news. Read and subscribe: accan.org.au/so/70PvD4ApX...

Our CEO Carol Bennett is quoted in ABC News on the Regional Tech Hub losing its federal funding. 28,000 people used it last year for free, independent connectivity help. Now they will have to turn to their telco provider instead. Read: www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05...

In 2025, Telstra recorded 5,221 outages in regions where it was the only provider. Under current law, no one is required to act when that happens. ACCAN is calling for that to change. www.accan.org.au/accan-submis...

Some Australians spend 10%+ of their income on connectivity. The benchmark is 2%. They go without other essentials to cover it. Senator Henderson and ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett aligned on this point in the Senate hearing on UOMO: mandatory domestic roaming is a no-brainer.

International visitors to Australia can connect to any available mobile network. Australians living in regional areas cannot. That is the reality our CEO Carol Bennett is calling out, and it is why ACCAN is pushing for domestic mobile roaming now.