The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has backed proposed new rules to make telcos show the geographic reach of their mobile networks to customers on maps in a standard way.
The ACCC said that the current system lets carriers show service coverage and quality on maps that might “not reasonably” match what users actually receive.
The competition regulator has told the Australian Communication and Media Authority, which is in charge of introducing the new rules, that the situation is distorting the market for mobile services.
Telstra is strongly opposed to the new standard as it would face having to wipe a million square kilometres area it claims to cover off its map if the proposed standard is introduced.
TPG Telecom, which has been contesting Telstra’s coverage claims for nearly a year and referred them to the ACCC for investigation last May, and Telstra’s other main rival, Optus, support the proposed standard with some caveats concerning the way it would say coverage labelled on maps.
At stake for all of them is the ability to gain and retain mobile service market share and revenue.
In its submission to the ACMA for its industry consultation the new standard, the ACCC said that mobile service coverage performance played an import role in the way consumers choose providers and how much they’re prepared to pay for it.
“However, there is currently a lack of transparency over how the mobile network operators produce their coverage maps and the extent to which the coverage maps represent on the ground experience is unclear,” the ACCC wrote.
“The lack of transparency and comparability leads to the risk of consumers making purchasing decisions based on unreliable information and purchasing services that are unsuitable for their needs,” it added.
The competition regulator told the ACMA, that it broadly supported the proposed new standard which stops telcos from claiming to provide useable service in areas where their mobile signal strengths fall below a -115dBm threshold.
Holding back enforcement
The ACCC said that the lack of a transparent standards has stymied its ability to use Australian consumer protection laws to take enforcement action to address misleading and deceptive coverage claims.
It wrote that “as mobile coverage is inherently variable, such enforcement actions can be subject to technical complexity and evidentiary challenges, and would not resolve the fundamental issue of the [telcos] having the discretion to adopt differing methodologies.”
The ACCC said the lack of a standard also led it to stop publishing analysis of self-reported coverage maps in its annual Mobile Infrastructure Report from 2024 – another means by which carriers’ service claims might have come under public scrutiny.
The ACMA’s -115dBm threshold
ACMA said its proposed -115dBm threshold is based on coverage metrics adopted overseas, and work by international telecommunications standards bodies and the federally-funded national audit of mobile coverage or NAMC.
Under the proposal ACMA wants the new coverage maps to include four labels: good coverage, moderate, useable and no coverage.
Areas where signal strengths exceed -95dBm would be considered to have good coverage, moderate coverage from -105dBm down to -115dBm, with a no coverage label to be applied to areas where intensity is lower.
The ACCC recommended varying the coverage labels slightly, using the term “variable” instead of “useable”, arguing it more closely matches the label’s description of the experience consumers could experience under the proposed standard.
Telstra, however, has told the ACMA that it should be permitted to continue labelling areas with signal strengths lower than its -115dBm threshold and down to -122dBm, as having useable mobile service on its coverage maps.
Telstra clashing with its rivals
In its submission to ACMA, Telstra said ACMA’s approach will confuse consumers and might make decisions about work, health and safety, and telco service purchases, that are based on misleading information.
“It’s not an insignificant proportion of our customer base that currently relies on our coverage below the -115dBm threshold.
“Our concern is that, if there’s not a way to represent it in some way in the new standard, we may need to find a different way to help our customers understand that it exists, because we know it works. We know they’re using it today and we’re not alone in that,” a spokesperson for Telstra told iTnews.
However, TPG Telecom told ACMA in its submission that Telstra has been using a flawed method to make coverage claims “for many years” and publishing information about service levels on its that are confusing for consumers.
“ACMA says coverage should mean your phone works. Telstra wants coverage to mean your phone might sometimes show a bar but probably can’t make a call.
“This is exactly the issue we exposed last year when Telstra was telling Australians their phone would work across 3 million square kilometres, a footprint that only holds together if you include vast areas where phones often don’t actually work,” a spokesperson for TPG Telecom said.
TPG Telecom said that Telstra was alone in opposing the proposed standard as it “exposes how much of its advertised coverage people can’t actually use”.
The rival operator of the Vodafone-branded mobile network told ACMA that it conducted mobile service tests at 20 locations where Telstra claimed to offer “full coverage”.
It said that the test showed that the probability of successfully placing calls over Telstra’s network in those locations using popular, modern makes of mobile handsets was “very unlikely”.
“Importantly in some places within this area, the phone registered a signal but could not establish a voice call. In other places no signal was registered at all.
“This shows that although a carrier may have represented that a phone has signal at a particular dBm level, in practice, calls cannot be established at that level,” TPG Telecom wrote in its submission.
Further recommendations
The ACCC also recommended that mobile network operators not be given flexibility to adopt alternative usable signal thresholds when making coverage maps “at this stage”.
It also recommended that ACMA ensure carriers be required to adopt identical modelling assumptions and methods when creating their maps.
The current proposed standard only requires carriers to adhere to eight of a larger set.
The ACCC also held concerns that the proposed standard allowed for carriers to publish multiple maps and said that it should only be permitted in limited circumstances.
“For example, a [telco] appears to be able to prepare multiple maps to represent their 4G or 5G outdoor mobile coverage – one version that meets the requirements of the standard and one prepared under different technical assumptions.
“We consider such flexibility risks creating confusion for consumers and undermines the comparability of coverage maps, and as such should be explicitly prohibited,” the ACCC wrote.
It called for assurances under the new standard that any other representations carriers made about their coverage to be based strictly on maps developed under the standard.
Communications minister Anika Wells last October directed the regulator to get to work on new coverage mapping standard.
ACMA released its draft of the instrument for industry consultation in January and, under Wells’ direction, it’s required to complete the standard by the end of the month and have it operating by June 30.
Both TPG Telecom and Optus want ACMA to engage in further discussions with the industry before going ahead with the new coverage mapping standard.
