Advocacy Corner: February – May 2025

With the federal election over and a returning Labor Government, we anticipate busy times ahead. Regulatory reform for the telco sector is already well underway with the:

• Security of Critical Infrastructure (SOCI) obligations – commenced 4 April;
• new ACMA rules relating to network outages involving communication requirements and changes to your complaints handling policy – commencing 30 June; and
• changes to the TIO’s complaints handling processes – commencing 1 July.
  
  

We’re proud to say that our advocacy work has had some impact in reducing some of the burdens on industry. We’ve managed to ensure the positive security obligations under the SOCI framework will be limited to carriage service providers with over 20,000 services in operation (or those that supply to government). Our consistent engagement with the ACMA has also resulted in the regulator releasing more educative information alongside new regulation.

You can read more about the SOCI obligations in this newsletter article, the ACMA rules on its website and the TIO changes on the TIO Portal. We are also working on developing updated legal templates that are compliant with the new ACMA rules and will make them available on the IAA Member Portal in due course so please keep posted!

In March, a telecommunications consumer protections Bill was tabled at Parliament to introduce the CSP Register, give the ACMA directly enforceable powers and increase penalties for non-compliance. Though this lapsed due to the election, we anticipate this will be prioritised by the new or returning Communications Minister.

Other things to watch out for includes a new domestic, family and sexual violence industry standard for telcos which we think may land any day now, as well as the revised TCP Code which we understand will soon be submitted to the ACMA for registration.

The Public Policy Advisory Panel will be meeting later this month to discuss all the above and more so please let us know if you have any concerns, or if you’d like to join the discussion!

And as always, please get in touch to share any thoughts on any of the open consultations below and/or previous submissions as we really appreciate your feedback.