ACCAN calls for real-time, single source of truth on outages

Telecommunication consumer advocacy body, ACCAN, has called for the establishment of a unified, public register of communications service outages.

ACCAN suggested the move would restore consumers’ faith in telcos following recent high-profile outages – including Optus’s emergency call service failures – without imposing hefty new financial or regulatory burdens on them.

However, the telcos’ peak lobby group, the Australian Telecommunications Alliance (ATA), said that the move would simply add unnecessary red tape without bringing any tangible benefit to consumers.

Currently, carriers are required to meet the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) standards for reporting outages, which require them to notify the public, stakeholders, and other carriers and carriage service providers.

In a position paper, ACCAN argued that the standard – the Telecommunications (Customer Communications for Outages) Industry Standard 2024 – could be amended to include the establishment of a public register that updates in real-time.

It said that the current standard sees carriers reporting outages to consumers via a fragmented mix of mediums, including the web, social media, email, SMS and broadcast media.

"Senate hearings last week revealed greatly concerning information that the Optus network had 272 reportable outages between September 11 and October 8," ACCAN chief executive Carol Bennett said.

"Consumers have no way of accessing this information at present. We simply have no way of knowing the 'when', the 'why', the 'who' and the 'where' of network outages, and this must change.

"It’s vital that consumer have a single source of information regarding network performance."

However, ATA chief executive, Luke Coleman, said that current regulations requiring telcos to keep customers and regulators informed about network outages were already sufficient.

“When an outage occurs, customers want to know what's happening and when they can expect to get back online - existing regulations already provide this," Coleman told iTnews.

"ACCAN's proposal would simply add more red tape on telcos, without providing timely or useful information for consumers when they need it."

ACCAN argued that the register would “not impose new regulatory burdens on carriers” and involve “minimal” additional costs.