The Australian Greens have called for laws that will put customers ahead of teleco profits and will call the company to a Senate Inquiry.
When Parliament resumes the Greens will introduce amendments that establish and enforce stronger telecommunications reliability standards, following a major outage that disrupted essential services and impacted millions of Australians.
Greens spokesperson for Communications, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said:
"Our telecommunications system is in crisis. Today, millions of people have been impacted by Telstra's outage.
"Access to a mobile phone and internet data is an essential for everyday life. Just like roads and electricity it should be treated as an essential service. Today's outage shows how vulnerable the system is and the Government must act.
"For too long Telstra and the other telcos have put their profits ahead of their customers' safety and both the Government and regulator, ACMA have failed to hold them to account.
"Australian's deserve a reliable service, whether it's to call the ambulance, call their work, or call their mum.
"There is currently no legal requirement for Telstra, or any other telecommunications supplier, to provide a reliable mobile phone system.
"The Greens will move new laws to put customers first.
"When we return to parliament, the Greens will move to legislate reliability standards to ensure that big telcos, who are raking in the big bucks, are legally required to provide reliable, dependable services
"Millions of Australians rely on Telstra's services for their everyday communications, work, banking and more. It's not just an inconvenience when these networks go down, it's a major disruption.
"Most concerning are reports that some calls to Triple Zero have not been connected. We know from past outages that failures of Triple Zero can be a matter of life and death.
"We will force Telstra to front the Senate Inquiry and explain why this happened and what led to the mass outage, including the impacts of cost-cutting and offshoring of services.
"The public expect and deserve better from Australia's largest telecommunications provider. Telstra must explain what went wrong, how many people were affected, what safeguards failed, and what steps will be taken to ensure this never happens again.
"This cannot be left to ACMA to manage. ACMA has become a lapdog, not a watchdog. It has become too cosy with the big telecommunications corporations and does not stand up for the interests of the Australian people.
