Issue No 21: 30 August 2022

2022 ACOMM AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED

Andrew Penn - 2022 Communications Ambassador

Winners in 2022 include Aussie Broadband, Ericsson, felix mobile, FiberSense, Goodtel, King & Wood Mallesons, NNNCo, Optus, Telstra, TPG Telecom, Nokia and Vocus.

Telecommunications sector icon, Mr Andrew Penn, has taken out the Australian communication industry’s most prestigious accolade; being awarded the title of Communications Ambassador 2022 at this year’s ACOMM Awards.

The winners of the prestigious 2022 Communications Alliance Awards were announced this evening at the 16th Annual ACOMM Awards Dinner in Sydney. The evening’s keynote address was delivered by the Hon. Michelle Rowland, the recently appointed Federal Minister for Communications – who brings deep experience and expertise to the role.

The individual category awards were taken out by a star-studded line-up of Australian service providers - featuring a mix of long-established players and new faces.

Andy Penn has had an extensive and illustrious career spanning more than four decades across three industries – telecommunications, financial services and shipping. Andy joined Telstra as Chief Financial Officer in 2012. Andy took leadership of the company as Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director in May 2015 and has guided the corporation through one of the most challenging periods of its history.

In 2018 Andy began a fundamental transformation of Telstra through the Telstra 2022 initiative and the creation of Infraco. In 2021 he re-shaped the company’s retail store strategy while also maintaining acknowledged solid levels of network and customer service, despite the enormous disruption wrought upon the entire sector by the global COVID pandemic.

“Andy’s contribution to our industry has been enormous and his executive team has provided invaluable endeavour and guidance to advance the industry’s interests more generally – including deep engagement in the activities of Communications Alliance at the Board level and operational level.” said Communications Alliance CEO, John Stanton.

Stanton added, “The ACOMM Awards represent the pinnacle of achievement for the Australian communications industry, and I congratulate all the winners and finalists in the 2022 ACOMMS,  

“Excellence in innovation is a pervasive trait in the achievements of the 2022 ACOMM winners.”
The winners of the 2022 ACOMM Awards are:

    
• COMMUNICATIONS AMBASSADOR – Andrew Penn
    
• Innovation – Large Company - Aussie Broadband: For their Fault Detector Project - The aim is simple – to proactively resolve faults before a customer is even aware there is an issue.
    
• Innovation – SME – FiberSense: For their DigitalAsset™ - Dramatically improving everyone’s experience in public spaces by adding a new level of real time and historical awareness of anonymised objects and events in public spaces. 
    
• Best Mobile Solution – felix mobile: For their SIM-only phone plan AND TPG Telecom and Nokia for the TPG Telecom #1 Global 5G Standalone Network
    
• Services to Industry – Professional Services - King & Wood Mallesons: For their Legal Services
    
• Commitment to Customer Service – Optus: The Community of Experts is Optus’ largest-ever operational transformation, intent on creating lasting customer relationships.
    
• Australian Space Industry Award – Vocus: For their support for the emerging low earth orbit - or LEO - satellite industry.
    
• Vendor Innovation – Ericsson Australia: Ericsson's 5G radio and cloud innovations in Australia are delivering the foundation for the mobile digital society. 
    
• Contribution to Society – Goodtel: For their Use your Telco as Force for Good initiative.  Goodtel strives every day to do work that will help make a better community for us and future generations.
    
• Diversity and Inclusion – TPG Telecom: For their Trans and Gender Diverse Inclusion - an organisation-wide campaign focused on the inclusion and belonging of trans and gender-diverse employees.
    
• Artificial Intelligence – Telstra: For their Cleaner Pipes Scam Call Blocking: NUMBAT capability.
    
• Best Digital Platform – NNNCo: NNNCo’s N2N-DL leading-edge data aggregation and device management platform for IoT applications can aggregate data from any network, device, application and host, and simultaneously manage up to millions of IoT devices.
    
• Cyber Security and Online Safety Innovation – Telstra: Telstra’s Number Barring and Treatment (NUMBAT) platform, leverages Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to block millions of suspicious calls before they reach customers.

Keeping telecommunications technical regulations up to date

Communications Alliance provided a submission to the ACMA’s consultation proposing the inclusion of QR codes as a form of demonstrating compliance as an option under the Telecommunications Labelling Notice. This change will align the requirements with those of the General Equipment Rules under radiocommunications regulations. 

Our submission acknowledged the benefits with the introduction of QR Codes but recommended that the ACMA take into account the need for a public educational element, to consider how compliance is clearly presented in a content-rich information source such as a webpage, and to take into account existing compliance mark requirements under other regimes such as the Electrical Equipment Safety System (EESS) and overseas national regulatory regimes.

In addition, the ACMA is also consulting on a proposal to repeal two ACMA ISDN standards and the surge protective device standard. Our submission noted that we did not identify any adverse consequences in the removal of the ACMA Surge Protective Devices Standard or the ACMA ISDN Standards from the Telecommunications Labelling Notice. The industry ISDN Standards that Communications Alliance manages (which are called up under the ACMA Standards) are still in use and can be made available to users as required.

Current Consultations

Below is a list of currently open telecommunications-relatedconsultations being conducted by Government and other organisations thatprovide an opportunity for you to have your say.

Communications Alliance members interested in contributing to anindustry submission (if one is being developed in response to a specificconsultation) should contactus.