Opening Statement - Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation) Bill 2025 - Carol Bennett, ACCAN CEO

Good morning Chair and Senators,  

On behalf of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), I would like to thank the Committee for the opportunity to speak on this landmark piece of legislation, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation) Bill 2025, or ‘the UOMO’.  

ACCAN is the peak national consumer advocacy organisation for communications. We advocate for affordable, accessible and reliable communications for all Australians – whether they live in metro areas, country towns, regional and rural Australia or in some of the most remote communities in the country.  

ACCAN welcomes this Bill as a necessary and overdue reform, and in particular the Bill’s empowerment of the Minister to make direct, enforceable reliability standards.  

However, ACCAN does have some concerns – as outlined in our submission to this Committee – about the affordability of mobile services and devices under the UOMO framework.  

We are in the midst of a significant and ongoing cost of living crisis, and international events are only likely to increase this, possibly for several years. In this context, ACCAN is concerned that the affordability of mobile services – already a cause of concern for many Australians – will continue to be an issue under the UOMO framework, without safeguards in place to ensure affordable access to devices and plans.  

Our submission calls for a range of affordability measures, including:  

• Requirements for providers under the legislation to offer baseline mobile plans and pre-paid services; 

• Incentives to increase the availability of low-cost LEOSat-compatible devices, including a device distribution program for low-income customers; and  

• Explicitly applying the UOMO to both Mobile Network Operators and Mobile Virtual Network Operators, to promote competition and affordability.  

  
  

ACCAN also calls for a dedicated statutory objectives section, to guide future ministerial decision-making under the legislation to prioritise consumer needs, reliability, affordability and public safety. 

ACCAN strongly supports the Ministerial powers in the Bill to set reliability standards, and urges the Minister to swiftly implement these standards, if and when the Bill is passed. Our submission also called for some expansion and alignment of these powers, as well as the application of civil penalties and consumer compensation for breaches.  

Finally, I note that much feedback on the Bill has centred around the legislated timeframes for the framework, with some calling for the start-date to be removed altogether, and the UOMO to commence as late as 2030.With some providers already advertising Direct to Device functionality for texts, and our neighbours in New Zealand recently announcing ‘Spark Satellite’ plans,  ACCAN questions the validity of claims that the UOMO could be in place no earlier than 2030. 

However, we acknowledge that satellite enabled voice capability is not yet widely available, and technical and market readiness is critical to the UOMO’s reliable and safe functionality. If implementation were pushed back, ACCAN strongly calls for the implementation of mandatory domestic roaming in the interim.  

Just this year, the OECD found that Australia’s high retail prices and limited improvement in mobile service quality were largely due to a lack of competitive pressure on the three major providers, making entry by new players difficult. 

Providers are also decreasing investment in infrastructure, particularly in remote areas, with a senior industry stakeholder recently saying, “we have reached the geographic and economic edge of where telcos are willing to invest in terrestrial mobile infrastructure.".

Claims that mandatory domestic roaming would disincentivise providers to invest in infrastructure, and would negatively impact competition, don’t stack up. 

In research recently commissioned by ACCAN from Essential Research, a national representative cohort of around 1,000 consumers were asked ‘how strongly do you support or oppose the introduction of a domestic mobile roaming service’. 73% of consumers supported the proposal, with only 5% opposing.  

ACCAN urges the Committee and the Government to seriously consider this critical step towards providing Australians more reliable, more competitive and more widespread coverage.  

I thank the Committee for its time and am happy to take any questions you may have.  

Ends.