ACCAN – Australia\u2019s peak national communications consumer body \u2013 has hailed the Federal Government\u2019s strengthening of enforcement powers a major win for telecommunications consumers.<\/p>\n
ACCAN\u2019s CEO, Carol Bennett, said the reforms will promote increased accountability, transparency and compliance within the telecommunications industry, and contribute towards improving trust in telcos which has been eroding.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis announcement by the Australian Government addresses longstanding calls from consumer advocates to improve accountability in the telecommunications sector and we applaud these critical reforms,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government\u2019s announcement to boost the enforcement powers of the ACMA will ensure telcos face real and meaningful penalties if they breach their obligations to Australians. This is a critical step towards ensuring that the telco sector works in the interests of consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGranting the ACMA greater and more timely enforcement powers goes a long way towards addressing the persistent limitations of the ACMA\u2019s regulatory toolkit\u201d.<\/p>\n
The changes will be part of expanded consumer protections under a suite of reforms to the\u00a0Telecommunications Act 1997 (Cth).<\/p>\n
The changes will mean the regulator, ACMA, will now be able to take direct enforcement action against breaches of industry codes rather than first having to issue a formal direction to comply.<\/p>\n
The reforms also provide for significant increases to maximum penalties for breaches of industry codes and standards, from $250,000 to $10 million, bringing the telco sector in line with other essential service sectors.<\/p>\n
The Australian Government also announced that it will establish a Carriage Service Provider (CSP) registration scheme to increase the visibility of providers in the telecommunications market. A CSP registration scheme will support a telecommunications market that works efficiently for all participants and provide much needed oversight of the market by the ACMA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ACCAN – Australia\u2019s peak national communications consumer body \u2013 has hailed the Federal Government\u2019s strengthening of enforcement powers a major win for telecommunications consumers. ACCAN\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11332,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seasiaonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seasiaonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seasiaonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seasiaonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seasiaonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/seasiaonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11331,"href":"https:\/\/seasiaonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11330\/revisions\/11331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seasiaonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seasiaonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seasiaonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seasiaonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}