ACCAN’s Submission to the ACMA on Changing the Complaints Record Keeping Rules Consultation

ACCAN recently made a submission to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) on strengthening telecommunications complaint reporting to enhance transparency, regulatory oversight, and consumer protection. 

This submission recommends ACMA: 

1. Establish a standardised complaint classification framework  Implement a uniform complaints classification system to ensure consistency in reporting across the telecommunications sector. The ACMA should establish detailed industry guidance to support accurate categorisation and improve data integrity. 

2. Improve transparency and facilitate the identification of systemic issues  Require service providers to publicly disclose their top three complaint categories to enhance consumer awareness and support informed decision-making. Strengthen regulatory mechanisms to prevent broad or inconsistent classifications to better identify systemic issues. 

3. Mandate the reporting of systemic issues and remedial actions  Introduce a requirement for providers to identify and report complaints indicative of systemic issues, including the measures undertaken to resolve them. This reporting should be integrated into existing regulatory data submissions to enable ongoing oversight. 

4. Disaggregate complaint data by consumer type  Require the reporting of complaint data to be disaggregated by consumer type, distinguishing between individual and small business customers. This will enable more targeted regulatory responses and better address group-specific challenges. 

5. Support improved reporting of network outage complaints  Support the inclusion of network outage complaints as a distinct complaint category, alongside clearer and consistent definitions, to improve data quality, transparency, and oversight of service reliability issues.