ACMA pledge scheme helps decimate dodgy device listings

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) says listings of unsafe mobiles phones and other shady radio devices have fallen dramatically since it introduced a voluntary scheme aimed at online retailers.

Under the scheme, announced in December last year during heightened scrutiny on emergency call services, ACMA secured pledges from the likes of eBay, Gumtree, Temu and Shein to take steps to block sales of the devices.

The regulator has now released results of a five-week audit conducted between April and May this year which revealed that listings of non-compliant and illegal devices had fallen to 361, 69 percent fewer than the 1162 than it discovered last year.

“The factors driving this substantial decrease are multifaceted, with the equipment safety pledge, introduced in December 2025, appearing to have been effective in driving change," ACMA wrote in its audit outcome report.

"Staff also note discussions with platforms indicate that the platforms themselves have also had a renewed focus on preventing the listings of noncompliant and illegal devices.

“We will continue to monitor and report on progress as a part of the reporting requirements under the pledge."

The audit examined seven online retail platforms: Amazon Australia, eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree, Kogan, Temu and Shein.

Of those five were found to be hosting listings of the dodgy devices.

Two-way radios dominated the list of dodgy devices ACMA found listed, accounting for 292 of the of 361 illegal or non-compliant devices discovered in total.

The next largest category were unauthorised mobile phone repeaters which accounted for 55 listings with 14 more for jamming equipment rounding out the remainder.

Notably, the audit appears not to have picked up any non-compliant or illegal grey market cellular mobile handsets.

Potential problems with the grey market mobiles were raised to prominence by the September Optus outage last year.

They became part of a wider discussion about the reliability of certain models of Samsung handsets in switching from mobile networks that aren’t working to ones that are during emergencies – a process known as “camp on”.

The situation prompted telcos through its lobby the Australia Telecommunications Alliance (ATA) to raise the possibility of establishing a shared database of problematic mobile handsets in a bid to emergency call service reliability.

Shortly after, it has shifted its position, asking the federal government to make ACMA’s existing register of compliant devices created through the device labelling regime public.

The register, based on ACMA’s Telecommunications Labelling Notice scheme, is largely a voluntary record-keeping exercise.

It requires device makers to make compliance declarations to the regulator, keep a record of compliant devices and apply a compliance label to their products.

The ATA has since told the Senate triple zero inquiry committee that the voluntary arrangement could be allowing many grey market handsets with triple zero calling problems to slip between the cracks and onto mobile networks

“The [arrangement] will only test a small fraction of devices in market (10-20 per year out of well over 40,000 handset makes/models in Australia).

“While mobile network operator device testing will complement these efforts, there will still be a significant number of devices in market that are not captured by these testing arrangements and will be impossible to capture by testing arrangements due to the nature of the devices and how they are brought into market, e.g. grey market imports etc,” the ATA said.

ACMA earlier this week revealed proposed changes to its mobile testing rules which are intended to have the effect of ensuring handsets are tested more frequently for compliance with its emergency call access standards.