Action on telco consumer protections: October to December 2022

Protecting telco customers experiencing financial hardship

In December 2022, we completed an audit of 15 telcos’ compliance with financial hardship and disconnection notification requirements in the TCP Code. We will begin a number of follow-up investigations in early 2023. We will publish the results of any breach findings.

Phone scams

Telcos blocked over 155 million scam calls in the quarter under the Reducing Scam Calls and Scam SMS Industry Code. This brought the total blocked calls to 955 million since the code first came into effect in December 2020. Telcos also blocked over 40 million scam SMS in the quarter, bringing the total to 90 million since the obligations commenced on 12 July 2022.

We completed a compliance audit of mobile telcos’ compliance with new multi-factor identity authentication rules to protect consumers from fraud on their telco services and accounts, such as unauthorised SIM swaps.

We also started an audit of SMS aggregators’ compliance with new reducing scam calls and scam SMS rules.

Other telco compliance activities

We started 4 investigations into telco compliance with:

• various rules that specify how telcos must store and protect data (1)
• IPND obligations (1)
• various anti-scam rules, including to prevent identity theft and SMS scams and IPND rules (1)
• anti-identity theft phone scam obligations (1).

We completed 6 investigations into compliance with:

• carrier licence rules that require Telstra to provide priority assistance service to customers who have a life-theatening medical condition (1)
• Complaint Handling Standard rules that specify how telcos must handle complaints (2)
• TCP Code rules that require telcos to ensure their sales representatives sell responsibly (1)
• TCP Code rules that set out the usage notification requirements telcos must follow (1)
• IPND rules which require telcos to provide customer data to the IPND Manager and ensure it is accurate and up to date (1).

Our compliance and enforcement outcomes for the quarter included:

• accepting a court-enforceable undertaking from Telstra to support compliance with its obligations to provide priority assistance (PA) to customers with life-threatening medical conditions. This followed an investigation that found that Telstra, among other things, failed to have adequate systems and processes in place to facilitate customers registering for PA
• directing Telstra to comply with the TCP Code after it failed to suspend credit management action against 70 of its financial hardship customers
• formally warning Lycamobile for failing to have its complaints handling policy publicly available on its website for the period 1 January 2022 to 31 August 2022
• publishing a court-enforceable undertaking from TPG Telecom Limited (trading as Lebara Australia, Lebara, Lebara Mobile) in relation to obtaining customer information and identity checking under the Prepaid Determination. We also published a guidance note setting out the ACMA’s approach to assessing compliance with the requirements for telcos to obtain customer name information and check customer identity before activating a prepaid service.

View our finalised enforcement actions into telco providers. Please note that we do not generally publish no breach findings or investigation reports prior to enforcement action being taken.

We started 112 compliance assessments and completed 69 compliance assessments into telco compliance with a range of consumer safeguards, including requirements under the TCP Code.

We also informally warned 91 telcos for apparent failure to provide mandatory reports of blocked scam call and scam SMS figures for Q3 2022. These alerts provide an early opportunity for the telcos to address any compliance issues they may have. If the ACMA sees repeated issues, we may investigate.

Completed compliance activities

We released the September 2022 telco complaints report. The weighted average time taken for customer complaints resolution was 5.5 days, down from 7.1 days for the same quarter last year.

Complaints per 10,000 services were down slightly from 63 to 57 and the escalation rate of complaints to the TIO declined from 7.5% to 6.2% from the same time in the previous year.

Rule-making activities

On 15 December 2022, we varied the Telecommunications Numbering Plan 1997 to introduce new anti-scam measures, including specifying the new short-code 7226 (SCAM) for voluntary use by telcos and new powers for the ACMA to withdraw a phone number if it has been used for scams or fraud. Other variations were to introduce shorter-term benefit to consumers and industry ahead of a comprehensive review of the instrument in 2024–25.

Key stakeholder forums

The Consumer Consultative Forum (CCF) allows key consumer, industry and government stakeholders to meet and discuss current telco issues impacting consumers. The CCF met online on 31 October 2022 to discuss:

• the upcoming TCP Code review
• the proposed amendment to the ACMA Act that will allow the ACMA to publish data on telco performance
• the independent review of the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman
• privacy issues in the wake of the Optus data breach
• issues facing consumers in vulnerable circumstances (such as financial hardship and domestic and family violence)
• coverage and connection issues for regional, rural and remote consumers.

The next meeting of the CCF will be the consumer representative-only video conference to be held in February 2023.

We held the ACMA Numbering Advisory Committee meeting on 30 November 2022 with enhanced consumer experience for local number portability and amendments to the Numbering Plan being key topics of discussion.