00:02The Ombudsman has taken a look at more than 27,000 complaints from regional Australians
00:07over the last two years and really found that there are absolutely systemic issues across
00:14the board in terms of not only in terms of coverage issues but also in the way that the
00:19telcos respond to complaints when there's been outages or faults and things like that.
00:26But some of the key findings have been that it's just taking too long for these faults
00:31to be rectified.
00:32For example, there's one example of a man making an appointment 20 times to get something fixed
00:39and it's just never happening.
00:41Another elderly lady was unable to make an emergency call after several attempts to get
00:46her landline fixed went unanswered.
00:49And the Ombudsman Cynthia Govitz says that has made a number of recommendations quite
00:55specific about mandating times to fix some of those issues but also about making it easier
01:00to modernise an identification so that people don't have to travel several hundreds of kilometres
01:06to go to their nearest telco store and things like that.
01:10But what she's really calling for is what they're describing as a root and branch review,
01:16saying that there needs to be an overarching look at what is going on here.
01:22Because it's not working for consumers, loud and clear in what they tell us, but equally
01:25we're hearing from the telcos it's not working for them.
01:28So rather than just adding bits and pieces of regulation on top of each other, we need
01:32to go back to basics and work out, do we have a system that supports access to reliable,
01:37affordable and accessible telco services?
01:40So Lauren, what have people in the regions been telling you?
01:44Well, they're saying that they're fed up, really.
01:46So what they're saying is that they're trying to get in touch with telcos to explain what
01:52their issues are.
01:53Examples of people who have had to go back to using UHF radios, have had to dig them out
01:58of the back of their sheds after 3G was switched off because they're saying that their service
02:02is actually going backwards, despite being told that there are all these other alternatives
02:07available to them.
02:09They're saying that when they're trying to contact people that they're just not getting
02:13the help that they need and the Ombudsman sort of noted that, you know, while there
02:18may be some issues in metro areas as well, the issues are really amplified in regional
02:22areas because they can actually be life or death situations.
02:26People are really isolated.
02:27It makes it really hard to, you know, to contact someone to get things rectified and it's just
02:35not working.
02:36I spoke to one person who, you know, was trying to find out why he couldn't access triple zero
02:41after his phone was switching to satellite and it just sounded like a bit of a farce with,
02:46you know, Telstra not understanding what his question was, even though it was in writing
02:52and, yeah, just a complete lack of understanding about what the challenges are in the bush and
02:57why it's important.
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