Issue No 5: 17 March 2020

Visit the 2019 ACOMMS photo gallery here and highlights video here. Media Release here.

https://acomms.com.au/2020/nominate-now/

New Members Join the 2020 ACOMM Awards Judging Panel

Communications Alliance is delighted to announce two prestigious new members of the 2020 ACOMM Awards Judging Panel.

Lizzie O’Shea is an Australian human rights lawyer, broadcaster, and writer – a former winner of the Access Now Human Rights Heroes Award and the Chair of Digital Rights Watch. Lizzie will judge award categories including those recognising industry excellence in Diversity & Inclusion, and in Sustainability.

Dr Megan Clark AC, FTSE is an Australian geologist and business executive, former director of the CSIRO, and head of the Australian Space Agency. Dr Clark will be a judge of the Australian Space Award. 

Nominations are open until 18 May for the 2020 ACOMMs – the 14th edition of Australia’s telecommunications industry awards.

The ACOMMs will be presented at a glittering awards dinner in Sydney on the evening of 26 August, featuring a keynote address from the Federal Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, the Hon. Paul Fletcher. 

Assisting Customers Impacted by COVID-19

COVID-19 is having a range of impacts on Australians, including an increase in the number of people working from home and potential financial challenges brought on by changes in the broader economy. 

Telco service providers are taking a range of actions to assist Australians during these challenging times.

Initiatives put in place by carriers and providers include:

• Bonus or unlimited data automatically applied to mobile and home broadband plans
• Enabling customers to move to higher speed plans to help them work from home
• Unlimited national calls
• Temporarily stopping all service suspensions due to late payments
• Free-rating of official health websites
• Increasing data capacity on networks to keep up with demand

To learn more about what specific steps your provider has put in place, we recommend checking their website.

Providers are also feeling the impact of COVID-19 on their staff, and encourage customers to make use of any self-service tools they make available via their website or apps to check account information, pay bills, or resolve simple inquiries.

Finally, all providers have in place a Financial Hardship Policy, and we encourage anyone facing financial uncertainty or hardship to contact your provider to discuss how they can support you. 

Review of the Unwanted Emission Boundary for the Deployment of 5G Services

The Communications Alliance Satellite Services Working Group (SSWG) has submitted a response to the ACMA’s 3.4 GHz spectrum licence technical framework consultation. The ACMA are proposing changing the definition of the spurious emission frequency boundary at 3740 MHz for devices that are required to be registered in the deployment of 5G services.

The proposed changes may affect the ability of satellite operators to licence new earth stations for Fixed Satellite Services (FSS) in the 3740 to 3840 MHz band, particularly in areas with a high density of base station deployments, such as within cities. The members of the SSWG, but not including Telstra and Optus,  recommend maintaining the status quo. The submission also recommends to apply a focus on site-specific apparatus licensing, with the unwanted emission boundary applying to individual sites and with no accompanying time constraints.