Telco temporary roaming - safety must come first - especially in our disaster season

ACCAN

Temporary Disaster Roaming (TDR), a vital and overdue safety net which requires Telstra, Optus and TPG to decide when it might be switched on, leaves the safety of regional and remote Australians in the hands of the telcos, with no accountability if it fails warned peak communications consumer body ACCAN this morning.

Under TDR, if enabled by the telcos, customers whose mobile network is knocked out by a natural disaster may be able to call, text and use basic data on another network. The telcos alone decide when and where it is switched on. There is no benchmark or accountability framework in place by which to measure success or identify cases where roaming is delayed or not activated at all.

The industry's own factsheet shows how limited the model is. TDR can run in no more than three disaster areas at once, each covering up to 15 mobile sites, and those areas must be at least 400km apart. It typically runs for around 24 hours at a time. It excludes metropolitan areas and does not work with medical alert devices. It also may not be switched on when power outages take down a network, which the industry itself identifies as one of the most common causes of disruption in a disaster.

"Any arrangement that helps people stay connected in a disaster is better than none. But we are concerned that this model relies heavily on telco discretion, and this won’t give many people confidence, with telecommunications the least trusted industry in the country according to Roy Morgan" said ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett.

"Public safety cannot rest on voluntary arrangements that the telcos can choose to turn on and off."

"We need this technology to work – and I look forward to collaborating with industry and government to set it up for success, but we know that best-efforts commitments from this sector often disappoint. At a minimum, we should see mandated Temporary Disaster Roaming arrangements – at best we should mandate domestic mobile roaming."

ACCAN is calling on the Senate to deliver permanent domestic mobile roaming when Parliament returns in October, through amendments to the Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation (UOMO) Bill.

"International visitors to Australia already roam automatically across all three networks. Australians can't. People in New Zealand, Canada and France have this protection, and there is no reason Australians should not have the same service," Ms Bennett said.

"The legislation to make this happen is before Parliament now. Our parliamentarians can guarantee Australians a connection in an emergency. We can do better, and we should."

Australians need connectivity in disasters. TDR can make a difference and is better than no agreement but at present, the safety of Australians rests on private telcos to make the right call during an on-ground crisis.

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) is Australia’s peak communication consumer organisation. The operation of ACCAN is made possible by funding provided by the Commonwealth of Australia under section 593 of the Telecommunications Act 1997. This funding is recovered from charges on telecommunications carriers.

Alec Bennetts
Mobile: 0490 540 444
Email: [email protected]