Australian telcos to be told how to communicate outages to customers

Australia’s telcos will soon have to meet enforceable standards for the way they communicate outages to customers.

The rules are to be drawn up by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) under the direction of communications minister Michelle Rowland.

They are an outcome of post-incident work stemming from last November’s Optus outage, the scale of which caught even Optus off-guard.

Rowland had indicated back in May that the government intended to back outage communication rules, which were recommended as part of post-incident review work.

Rowland said the direction she has now issued “requires the ACMA to make new rules to ensure telcos keep customers informed and updated regarding major outages, for example, through website updates, email updates to customers, social media updates and radio and television news bulletins.”

“The ACMA will also make rules to improve customer communications during significant local outages that are smaller in scale than major outages,” Rowland said in a statement. 

Industry would have an opportunity to provide input into the development of the communication standards.

Rowland said that the ACMA would also review an existing complaint handling industry standard “to ensure complaints processes are effective for consumers in the context of network outages.”

Consumer representative group ACCAN’s CEO Carol Bennett said the new industry standard is important “because consumers need clear, concise and timely information in the event of an outage.”

“An outage can be made worse if clear communication is not given by a telco as to what the problem is, what they are doing to solve the problem, the extent of the issue and an estimated resolution timeframe,” Bennett said.

“During the Optus outage last November, consumers and businesses were beyond frustrated by Optus’ slow response to basic questions about the outage. 

“This standard will help to prevent this from happening in the future by requiring telcos to act in a clear and timely manner.”