From CommsDay of 24 September 2026
As usual there is a lot going on in telecommunications, all covered in CommsDay. Amongst the bigger stories this week were the release of the Senate Committee’s report on the Optus outage in September 2025 (Tuesday’s CommsDay), and the unauthorised access of an OpenAI agent to a Medicare statistics portal (today’s CommsDay). We will hear more of both these developments. The Senate Committee’s report recommendations were far from unanimous, and many of its recommendations (such as national roaming) may be absorbed into other ongoing review processes. The OpenAI breach is being investigated by Government agencies, and will feed into the broader discussion on appropriate AI guidelines and safeguards at national and international levels.
We have selected the report in yesterday’s CommsDay on TelSoc’s September webinar as our Story of the Week. Our speaker, Cynthia Gebert, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, provided a wide-ranging discussion on many issues affecting customers. Many of Cynthia Gebert’s comments were in the Q&A session following her speech. The speech may be accessed on Linked In at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/trust-reform-future-telecommunications-hm7pe or on the TIO website at https://www.tio.com.au/news/trust-reform-and-the-future-of-telecommunications-building-a-framework-that-works-for-everyone
Note that the various issues covered in the article below have been emboldened as a covenience to readers of this newsletter.
TIO warns scam rules could drive smaller telcos out
Telecommunications industry ombudsman Cynthia Gebert has warned that obligations under Australia’s scam prevention framework could drive some telcos out of the market, while leaving consumers unsure where to take a complaint.
“I am concerned that we will see some telcos fall out of the industry because of the size and scale of the obligations,” Gebert told a Telsoc webinar. She said she was hearing “signiFicant concerns” across the sector about how the framework would work in practice.
The TIO has entered a memorandum of understanding with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority to help resolve uncertainty over whether a case is a scam, fraud or a billing dispute. Gebert said a customer might describe a billing problem as a scam and approach AFCA when the matter belonged with the TIO.
“At the moment it’s going to be exceptionally confusing and difficult for a consumer to know where to go, who to raise a complaint
with and how to navigate the system,” she said.
Gebert expected most people who lost money to approach their bank and AFCA first. She also questioned whether consumers distinguished between scams delivered through telco messaging and digital platforms. “Does a consumer know if their scam text came from a WhatsApp message or a text message?” she asked.
On outages, Gebert questioned whether larger penalties alone would improve network reliability. “I’m not of the mind that penalties by themselves will change practices of the telco industry,” she said. Providers needed to prepare for failures, communicate promptly and decide how they would treat affected customers.
She also resisted drawing an immediate case for domestic roaming from the Senate Triple Zero inquiry. Although outages had especially severe consequences for region al and remote consumers with limited network choice, Gebert said she wanted to see the outcome of the ACCC’s review.
“I don’t see that there is a direct correlation between the outcomes of the 000 inquiry and the need to flick a switch on domestic roaming when we have a review by the ACCC in play at the moment,” she said.
Gebert did, however, back a baseline compensation framework for outages. A minimum entitlement would give consumers and providers clarity, she said, while leaving room for greater compensation where an outage had an unusually serious impact on an individual. She said a recent Telstra outage had prompted an increase in complaints, though fewer than she expected because the company had systems to respond quickly.
Turning to digital platforms, Gebert criticised the proposed Digital Duty of Care for requiring internal complaints processes without providing independent external dispute resolution. She called it “an opportunity missed by the government”. A platform complaints scheme within a broader ombudsman office would need federal establishment funding, followed by industry funding from platforms rather than telcos, she said. Gebert reiterated the TIO’s support for directly enforceable consumer protections and expressed disappointment that the Enhancing Consumer Safeguards Bill had yet to pass parliament.
She also cautioned against treating falling TIO complaint numbers as proof that all consumer problems had been resolved. Some people might give up before lodging a complaint, while abuse directed at ombudsman staff had reached a level at which police had been called to help protect them.
Grahame Lynch
IN TODAY’S COMMSDAY (Friday 25 September 2026)
Vocus plans to build a 4,000km fibre route from Brisbane to Darwin via Townsville, adding capacity for AI data centres and a new terrestrial path to northern Australia’s international cable gateways.
The Australian Telecommunications Alliance has called for carrier and carriage service provider services to be exempted from the proposed digital duty of care, arguing that telcos generally cannot see or control the online content carried over their networks.
An undisclosed carriage service provider has suffered a setback in cases brought against the Home Affairs minister and ASIO over a secret government decision to bar them from offering telco services.
The federal government has flagged a broader review of mobile service standards as it prepares to implement the Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation, with network reliability and outage repair times among the possible subjects.
NAB is adopting Quantium Telstra’s Scam and Fraud Indicator, a solution designed to help organisations detect potentially risky activity across multiple sources of information.
Diverse Network Group has urged the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to exclude physical network outages and wholesale delays from non-financial loss compensation, as the ombudsman reviews its $1,500 limit for such claims.
Australia could see a dramatic expansion in submarine cable landings, fibre routes and data centre connectivity beyond Sydney, Melbourne and Perth over the next decade, according to Torus Networks chief executive Matthew van Hecke.
Chorus is advocating for the government to at least partly deregulate transport fibre fixed line access services on the grounds that sufficient competition exists to support a reduction in regulatory intervention.
Hubble Network, the developer of a global Internet of Things tracking network using Bluetooth technology and a low Earth orbit constellation of satellites, closed a US$200 million Series C funding round at an enterprise valuation of US$1.6 billion.
John Stevens has joined DXN as its chief operating officer.
The federal government has reappointed Mike Mrdak as a non-executive director of the NBN Co board for a three-year term starting on 1 October 2026.
Google has expanded availability of its “true-to-life” video communications system, Google Beam, to six countries, with units shipped to customers in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, and Japan.
Digital Realty is building a new cable landing station at its LAX12 data centre in Los Angeles.
Shipments of artificial intelligence-equipped glasses reached 4.2 million units in the first half of 2026, up 127% year-on-year, said the latest data from market trackers Omdia.
AND IN THE AI INFRA SUPPLEMENT
The unauthorised access of an OpenAI agent to a Medicare statistics portal has become an international test of two questions: how an autonomous system responds when a website refuses it access, and how quickly its developer must report what follows.
Acting prime minister Richard Marles has sharpened the account of the OpenAI agent’s conduct, saying it sought information from a Services Australia website, was refused and then gained unauthorised access.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has called for common international standards to assess frontier AI systems, alongside rapid incident reporting and secure channels for sharing threats with critical infrastructure operators.
Google has told a parliamentary AI inquiry that data centres could help manage electricity demand, while pointing to a 25MW NSW solar project as an example of its investment in new generation.
SAP has urged the federal government to define sovereign AI infrastructure by who controls and can access its systems, rather than where data is stored.
The City of Melbourne says Victoria’s ministerial approval pathway is leaving local councils with too little say over data centre developments, as Australia’s existing planning and governance rules struggle to keep pace with the sector’s growth.
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