Peak communications consumer body ACCAN says today’s Vodafone outage is another reminder that Australians are increasingly dependent on telecommunications services that are not subject to the same reliability expectations as other essential services.

The outage affected Vodafone customers across Australia, disrupting access to calls, mobile data and other services relied upon by millions of consumers and small businesses.

ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett said Australians should not have to put up with recurring large-scale telecommunications outages as a normal part of modern life.

“Every major outage leaves consumers disconnected from work, family, banking, government services and essential communications,” Ms Bennett said.

“These outages are not just an inconvenience. They have real economic and social consequences for households, small businesses and communities across Australia.”

“Vodafone is one of our smaller providers, so the impact of this outage will naturally be smaller. As we learnt with the Optus outage in 2023, when an even larger carrier goes down, taking payment platforms with it, the economic disruption and safety impacts are enormous.”

The impact of major telecommunications outages can be significant. Following the nationwide 2023 Optus outage, estimates suggested the disruption cost the Australian economy around $2 billion.

“While today’s outage appears smaller than the Optus outage, Australians are right to ask why these incidents continue to occur and what is being done to prevent them,” Ms Bennett said.

“Consumers deserve timely information about what has happened, what services are affected, and when they can expect services to be restored.”

ACCAN expects carriers and regulators to carefully examine the cause of today’s outage and ensure all relevant obligations have been met.

“It is timely that we’re less than a fortnight away from new rules about telco outages coming into effect. Soon, mandatory telco outage registers will provide customers with clear and detailed reporting on significant network disruptions.”

ACCAN continues to call for stronger reliability and resilience requirements across telecommunications networks. Our Consumer Sentiment polling shows that more than three quarters (76 per cent) support minimum reliability requirements for mobile networks – and there is legislation before Parliament which could be amended to bring it in.

“We need reform to set reliability standards for mobile networks so that these kinds of outages become an issue of the past and we can build our economy on the technologies of the future – which demand reliable and consistent connectivity,” Ms Bennett concluded.

Note: ACCAN’s media line has been affected by this outage. If your enquiry fails to connect, please ring: 0490 540 444 via WhatsApp.

This press release has also been published on VRITIMES