Press Release · For Immediate Release
Diverse Networks Group Submits Response to ACMA's Draft Telecommunications (Consumer Protections) Industry Standard 2026
Diverse Networks Group has lodged a formal submission with the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) in response to its public consultation on the draft Telecommunications (Consumer Protections) Industry Standard 2026. The group supports practical consumer safeguards, but warns that moving from a co-regulatory Industry Code to a directly enforceable standard, layered with rigid compliance obligations and direct financial penalties, will disproportionately harm independent, non-Tier-1 providers and push best-efforts retail pricing towards enterprise-level costs.
Diverse Networks Group welcomes the opportunity to submit its formal response to the Australian Communications and Media Authority's (ACMA) public consultation on the draft Telecommunications (Consumer Protections) Industry Standard 2026.
As an independent, Australian-owned telecommunications service provider operating across competitive, low-margin retail and business sectors, the group strongly cautions against the expanding tide of rigid, highly prescriptive regulatory obligations. While ensuring appropriate consumer safeguards is an essential element of a functioning telecommunications market, regulatory intervention over recent years has drifted heavily in one direction: increasingly penalising carriers and Retail Service Providers (RSPs) while ignoring the commercial, technical, and operational realities of running telecommunications networks.
“The decision to abandon a co-regulatory Industry Code in favour of a directly enforceable ACMA Industry Standard represents a fundamental shift in regulatory exposure. Layering direct financial penalties and rigid compliance checklists onto an industry already buckling under heavy operational costs directly threatens market competition, rewards bad-faith consumer behaviours, and disproportionately harms independent, non-Tier-1 providers.”
David Trad, MD & Group CEO of Diverse Networks Group
Directly Enforceable Standards and Wholesale Dependencies
The transition from an Industry Code to a mandatory ACMA Standard radically changes the compliance landscape by making RSPs directly liable for administrative and procedural infractions. However, this framework fails to account for the structural realities of Australian telecommunications: most independent RSPs rely entirely on upstream wholesale infrastructure providers such as NBN Co, wholesale mobile network operators, and backhaul carriers for service delivery, credit check verification APIs, coverage validation, and fault rectification.
When an upstream wholesale fault or delay occurs, the retail provider still bears the administrative and financial brunt of ACMA compliance, customer remediation, and potential enforcement action, despite having zero operational control over the underlying physical infrastructure. Tier-1 entities possess the compliance, legal, and regulatory affairs departments to absorb complex administrative mandates; independent RSPs operating on thin margins must divert critical engineering and customer support resources into paperwork. Automated, direct regulatory penalties applied without regard to wholesale causation create a systemic imbalance that stifles smaller providers and concentrates market power among dominant incumbents.
Responsible Selling, Credit Assessments and Best-Efforts Services
The draft Standard introduces highly prescriptive requirements around pre-sale disclosures, credit assessments, sales incentives, and mandatory remedies for coverage or service issues, undermining long-standing commercial service structures. Retail and residential telecommunications services are commercially priced and structured on a best-efforts shared network model to maintain affordability for ordinary Australians; by mandating extensive pre-sale guarantees, strict coverage remedies, and complex sales friction, the ACMA is effectively forcing uncontracted, enterprise-level Service Level Agreement (SLA) overhead onto standard retail products.
Overly rigid credit assessment and pre-sale disclosure mandates also eliminate streamlined, automated digital sign-up workflows, artificially inflating the cost to serve every customer. Broad restrictions on sales incentives and internal performance structures ignore standard corporate governance practices. RSPs already maintain strong quality assurance frameworks to prevent mis-selling; rigid, top-down payroll and commission mandates restrict commercial autonomy without delivering measurable consumer benefits.
Checks, Balances and Consumer Mitigation Obligations
A major flaw in the draft Standard is its failure to establish reciprocal responsibilities for consumers or to account for existing risk mitigation technologies. In defining remedies and protections for vulnerability or mis-selling, the proposed rules lack objective, independent verification frameworks, creating a low-barrier target for serial complainants seeking contract cancellations or remedies without providing concrete proof.
The review also disregards the ubiquitous availability of consumer-side redundancies such as 4G/5G mobile data failover, Wi-Fi Calling during mobile coverage gaps, or temporary hot spotting. A temporary degradation in primary fixed-line service does not equate to complete isolation when fallback technologies are actively in place. Without clear safeguards, tracking mechanisms, and evidentiary thresholds to filter out bad-faith claims, RSPs will be subjected to administrative exhaustion and severe compliance exposure for minor procedural technicalities.
Regulatory Creep and the Stifling of Investment
Regulatory creep in the telecommunications sector has systematically villainised service providers, treating them as default entities of strict liability regardless of force majeure events, severe weather, or third-party fibre cuts. Capital investment requires regulatory stability and predictable operational risk. When every sales interaction, coverage map variation, or service change carries direct ACMA penalty exposure, providers are forced to divert capital from network expansion and innovative product development into defensive compliance bureaucracy.
Uncapped compliance overhead and escalating regulatory risks will drive small and mid-tier RSPs out of the market or force them to merge with Tier-1 carriers. This reduction in provider diversity directly harms Australian consumers by stifling price competition, reducing service innovation, and leaving the market dominated by a few large entities.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Diverse Networks Group maintains that consumer protection rules must be realistic, operationally achievable, and proportional to the service being delivered. Directly enforceable standards must not become an administrative engine that drives smaller providers out of business. The group urges the ACMA to incorporate the following recommendations into the final Industry Standard:
- Incorporate wholesale safe harbours: establish explicit statutory protections for RSPs where service failures, activation delays, or coverage discrepancies are caused by wholesale infrastructure providers or third-party networks.
- Preserve digital onboarding and best-efforts pricing: ensure pre-sale and credit assessment rules remain outcome-based rather than prescriptive, so automated digital workflows can continue without forcing enterprise SLA costs onto retail pricing models.
- Recognise consumer fallback and mitigation: explicitly account for mobile failover, Wi-Fi calling, and alternative backup technologies when evaluating consumer impact or mandatory service remedies.
- Provide targeted exemptions and tiered compliance for small and independent RSPs: introduce scaled compliance obligations for small and mid-tier providers to prevent anti-competitive regulatory burdens.
- Mandate an extended transition period: provide a minimum 12-to-18-month implementation roadmap following final publication of the Standard so providers have sufficient lead time to re-engineer IT systems, billing engines, and operational workflows.
Media Contact:
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David Trad
MD & Group CEO, Diverse Networks Group
[email protected]