Healthy telco competition an ACCC priority for next financial year

Dylan Crismale - Digital Content Editor

Last updated 24 February 2025

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has announced its enforcement and compliance priorities for the 2025-2026 financial year. In the essential services sector - including telecommunications, electricity, and gas - the key focuses are promoting competition, and cracking down on misleading pricing and claims.

In a keynote address last week, ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said “Consumers are still doing it tough, and the cost of groceries and essential services have contributed to significant cost of living stress.”

“We will continue to work hard to protect consumers by using the full range of our tools and powers to enhance competition and fair trading, through tough and rigorous enforcement as well as targeted compliance and education initiatives.”

In her speech, Cass-Gottlieb acknowledged work the ACCC has undertaken over the past financial year in the telecommunications space.

Last year the ACCC allowed the network sharing agreement between Optus and TPG-Telecom to go ahead, which allowed TPG to expand the coverage of the Vodafone network from 96% to 98.4% of the Australian population.

The ACCC also looked into anti-competitive practices in the digital economy.

Through investigations in 2024, the ACCC found that Google had entered exclusive arrangements with Telstra, Optus and TPG which made it compulsory for Google Search to be the default option on Android devices sold by the three major carriers.

Each of the telcos presented undertakings to the ACCC that they would "not renew or enter into any new agreements with Google that require Google’s search services to be pre-installed and set as the default search function on an exclusive basis on devices they supply".

The ACCC announced it would be working on implementing a proposed new digital competition regime alongside the Treasury.

So far in this financial year, the ACCC has commenced Federal Court proceedings in eight matters including one against Optus where the ACCC alleges the telco acted with "unconscionable conduct in sales and debt collection activity, including selling telecommunications goods and services to hundreds of consumers, many of whom were experiencing vulnerability and/or disadvantage".

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Dylan Crismale

Digital Content Editor

Dylan Crismale is a Digital Content Editor at WhistleOut, has been writing for almost a decade across a variety of Australian publications. He previously worked as a writer at Finder covering energy, internet and mobile plans. Dylan is passionate about finding the best deals to save people money and educating people about tech. When he's not sat at his desk Dylan loves working out, bingeing TV and hanging out with friends.

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