Telco industry rules for major outages

The new rules in the Telecommunications (Customer Communications for Outages) Industry Standard 2024 require telcos to keep customers and the public informed when there is a major outage to a telecommunications network. 

Telcos are required to provide affected customers with regular updates that are timely, up-to-date, accessible (including for customers with a disability or who are culturally or linguistically diverse) and made through a mix of public and direct communication channels. Specifically, telcos are required to:

• communicate information about the major outage to other carriers and carriage service providers (CSPs), the public, and other relevant stakeholders 
• send update notifications to customers every 6 hours in the first 24 hours, then one every 24 hours for the duration of the outage.   
• put relevant and up-to-date information about the major outage on their website
• use a variety of methods to keep customers up to date, which may include apps, email, SMS, social and other media 

The rules will come into effect on 31 December 2024.

An outage is considered to have occurred when there is an adverse impact on a telecommunications network that is used to supply carriage services to customers. The outage is deemed a ‘major outage’ if it is (or is expected to be) longer than 60 minutes and it impacts 100,000 or more services, or all services using the network in a state or territory. 

The definition of ‘major outage’ is set out in the Standard.

The carrier that owns the telecommunications network affected by the outage determines when a major outage has occurred.

Once a carrier detects a major outage, it is required to notify other carriers and carriage service providers that they have a commercial arrangement with for the supply of telecommunications services. It is also required to notify the public through its website and social media accounts or websites, and other relevant stakeholders.

Once the CSP has been notified of the major outage, it is required to attempt to communicate certain information with its customers through a range of methods of communication. These communication methods must be easy to understand and accessible to persons with a disability, or from a culturally or linguistically diverse background or other special needs.

Carriers do not communicate with customers because they only supply the carriage service to the CSP, and do not have direct relationships with the end-users. However, carriers are still required to put information up on their website if they detect a major outage over their network.

Relevant stakeholders are: 

• the ACMA
• the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts
• the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman.

These rules are specifically designed to improve telco communication with customers when a major outage occurs, which addresses Recommendation 10 in the Review into the Optus Outage of November 2023. Work is ongoing to address the remaining recommendations of that review, including communication of major outages to emergency service organisations (police, fire, ambulance) (Recommendation 5).

Under the Minister’s Direction, the ACMA will make further rules regarding ‘significant local outages’ by 30 April 2025, that begin no later than 30 June 2025. These rules will deal with outages that affect fewer than 100,000 services.

The rules require CSPs to, as far as is reasonably practicable, make available a contact method that is capable of responding immediately to requests for urgent assistance from a customer. 

Requests for ‘urgent assistance’ can include requests from customers supplied with Priority Assistance services under Industry Code C609:2007 Priority Assistance for Life Threatening Medical Conditions.

Currently, CSPs are not required to comply with the notification and information requirements of the Standard if the major outage was caused by a natural disaster. This is because natural disasters that result in a major outage generally involve communications by multiple agencies, including emergency services, government agencies and essential service providers, involved in responding to the affected community. 

We are considering how best to extend the rules to cover communications about such outages without interfering with time critical communications from emergency service agencies and will make decisions on these rules by 30 April 2025. Until this is resolved, the Standard includes a requirement for the carrier over whose network an outage occurs to include information on their website about the major outage for the public.

Before the development of the Standard, there were no mandatory requirements for the way in which telecommunications providers communicate with customers in relation to outages.

The ACMA was directed by the Minister for Communications to determine the Standard in response to one of the recommendations made in the Review into the Optus Outage of 8 November 2023 (Recommendation 10).  The Review found that communication with customers during the outage was inadequate and recommended that the ACMA develop a standard or determination requiring carriers to communicate specific information to customers during and about outages – including an explicit focus on communications between the affected network provider and its customers as well as other stakeholders.