CommsDay Story of the Week - from the 22 December 2025 issue of CommsDay

We have chosen this article about the overall performance of the telecommunications industry by Grahame Lynch, even though it is more in the nature of an analysis (as he says in the headline) and an editorial.  But it could well be news to a lot of people. Grahame's article serves to correct impressions of the industry that arise from what is found to be newsworthy on a day-to-day basis.  Today's is the last CommsDay for the year, and our last Story of the Week for the year. We wish you all the best for the Christmas season and the New Year.  Thanks for supporting TelSoc in 2025.

ANALYSIS BY GRAHAME LYNCH

Australia’s telcos are performing better than ever but no-one wants to mention it

In September, Telstra CEO Vicki Brady used a National Press Club address to kick off what was clearly intended to be a broader reform conversation about telecommunications and Australia’s economic future. Connectivity,
she argued, had become foundational infrastructure rather than a discretionary service, yet it was still too often treated as something that would simply “be there” without deliberate policy attention or sustained investment.
That speech was meant to be the opening act. The follow-through was supposed to come weeks later, with Frontier Economics research and an Australian Telecommunications Alliance–led parliamentary showcase backed by the major telcos designed to reinforce the same themes: productivity, investment certainty and the need to re- move friction from infrastructure delivery.

Instead, the agenda was derailed.

The September 18 Optus Triple Zero outage triggered an immediate political and media backlash that quickly expanded beyond the specific incident to engulf the entire telecommunications sector. Within days, the narrative had hardened: telcos were unreliable, networks were fragile and systemic failure was to blame.

The problem with that narrative is that it does not survive contact with the evidence. The Kerry Schott review documents a sequence of events that is unusual to the point of improbability. A routine change intersected with human error, poor escalation and handset conϐiguration behaviour that failed to meet reasonable user expectations. This was not a case of capacity exhaustion or pervasive network collapse. It was a change-management and standards failure. Serious, yes. Representative of day-to- day network performance, no. 

That distinction matters, because while political, regulatory and executive attention has been consumed by a single extreme event, the underlying performance of Australia’s telecommunications networks has continued to improve, quietly and measurably.

The ACCC’s Measuring Broadband Australia program shows that during busy even- ing hours NBN fixed-line services are now delivering between 97% and 102% of advertised download speeds nationally. Even in the busiest hour of the week, average performance exceeded 100% for the ϐirst time in the program’s history. These are not marketing claims. They are verified measurements taken from real households.

At a network level, the reliability picture is even clearer. NBN Co’s 2025 dashboards show the access network was up and running 99.93-99.95% of the time. Average bandwidth congestion across the fixed access network is now effectively negligible, at around zero minutes per week per premises, compared with around five minutes a year earlier. During the reporting period, 0.000% of homes and businesses connected to the fixed-line network experienced downstream congestion.

Fixed wireless performance tells a similar story. All NBN fixed wireless cells are connected via backhaul links recording less than 0.25% packet loss during busy hours over a 28-day period, a result that undercuts lingering assumptions that fixed wire- less is inherently fragile or constrained.

The value Australians are getting for that reliability is often overlooked. That is particularly evident in NBN Co’s Fibre Connect and Accelerate Great programs. Wholesale upgrades have turned what was once a 100Mbps product into a 500Mbps service at the same price, while fibre upgrades are being delivered at no upfront cost to consumers, funded through a mix of equity, borrowings and cashflows.

SAME WITH MOBILE: The same disconnect between narrative and reality is evident in mobile.

Australia’s mobile networks have earned strong independent validation. In the latest Opensignal Global Network Excellence Index, Australia ranked among the top mobile markets globally, placing 8th in the world on composite measures of network performance including 4G and 5G availability, speed and consistent quality, a noteworthy achievement for a country of Australia’s size and geography. Significantly, it was for consistent quality that Australia scored its most notable improvement.

In some dimensions the country ranks even higher compared with large-sized peers outside Europe, illustrating that on key real-world experience measures Australian networks sit comfortably among the world’s best.
Mobile services are available from around $25 per month, with competitive mid-range plans clustered around $35, and flagship plans typically priced below $70. Mobile broadband services are likewise available from $25 a month. These price points exist because networks continue to expand, not because investment has stalled.

Telstra and Optus have each added more than 1,000 mobile sites net since 2021, while Telstra has increasingly shifted new 5G deployment beyond the major cities, concentrating recent additions in regional, remote and very remote Australia. This is not a sector retreating from coverage aspirations. It is one still deploying capital.

Satellite services further complicate the claim that Australian connectivity is brittle. Around 400,000 Australian premises now receive broadband via low Earth orbit satellite services, principally Starlink. In performance terms, Starlink recorded aver- age download speeds of 228.8 Mbps across all hours, easing to 197.2 Mbps during busy periods, with upload speeds averaging 47.5 Mbps across all hours and 46.2 Mbps during busy hours. These figures represent a step-change from the capped, single-digit copper services of a decade ago.

Beyond consumers, Australia now supports tens of millions of Internet of Things connections spanning energy, transport, logistics, agriculture, health and public infra- structure. These services are low-bandwidth but highly availability-sensitive, operating continuously and often without human oversight. You don’t hear about them much because they rarely fail.

RARE STORY: And yet, this is a story the sector tells far too rarely.

Too many telco executives, managers and policy operatives approach public debate with a timidity that borders on paralysis. There is a persistent fear that a cross word from an ill-informed senator, or some click-bait from a junior reporter on a metropolitan desk, might end a career. In that environment, understatement becomes habit and silence substitutes for advocacy.

Luke Coleman, CEO of the Australian Telecommunications Alliance, argued in an address to CommsDay’s Wholesale Congress in October that the sector has been too quick to internalise criticism and too slow to point to its own track record. His re- marks did not minimise recent failures, but they did place them in context, noting that telecommunications remains the only sector of the Australian economy that has delivered more services at lower prices over the past decade, alongside falling complaint rates and improving digital inclusion.

That perspective deserves consideration, not because it is boosterism, but because it is grounded in data that is too often absent from public debate. Shareholders, too, are frequently forgotten in this impasse.

Telecommunications is capital-intensive, politically exposed and heavily regulated, yet expected to deliver ever-higher performance at falling unit prices. Returns on in- vested capital across much of the sector remain modest. The tolerance shown by investors in accepting those returns is rarely acknowledged in public discourse.

This matters. A sector that does not explain its value will eventually be regulated as if it has none.

Failures that affect emergency services deserve scrutiny and reform. But allowing a single incident to eclipse the broader reality risks policy overreach driven by outrage rather than evidence. Telecommunications remains one of the few sectors delivering nationally consistent, high-reliability services at scale, at prices that have not risen in line with demand or usage.
As the year draws to a close, that is worth remembering. Most Australians will rely on these networks over the holiday period without giving them a second thought. That quiet dependability is not an accident, and it should not be forgotten.
Merry Christmas, and best wishes for the New Year.

Grahame Lynch

IN TODAY'S LAST ISSUE FOR THE YEAR

The Productivity Commission has called for the federal government to initiate a substantial regulatory review of the telco sector, as part of a suite of recommendations from its inquiry into creating a more dynamic and resilient economy. 

Aussie Broadband has revealed it will be assessing several initiatives aimed at mitigating the impact of planned steep cuts to the regulated rates for voice interconnection services across Australia. 

The Department of Defence has signed a multi-year Deed of Standing Offer with Google Australia to provide secure, air-gapped hyperscale cloud capability for Defence's ICT environment. 

Fixed-line voice was the most complained about category of telecom services during the September quarter in terms of complaints per 10,000 services in operation, according to the Australian Communications and Media Authority. 

The Australian Telecommunications Alliance has urged the federal government to narrow the range of carrier and communications service provider offerings captured by Australia's online safety framework, warning that the proposed Digital Duty of Care risked compounding an already complex compliance landscape. 

The Australian National Audit Office said it did not identify any findings that pose a significant or moderate business or financial risk to NBN Co during its audits of the company's 2024-25 financial statements. 

Macquarie Group's principal investment arm has taken a strategic minority stake in Australian systems integrator Brennan, positioning the privately owned firm for an accelerated phase of acquisition and organic expansion while founder and managing director Dave Stevens remains majority shareholder. 

ANALYSIS BY GRAHAME LYNCH: Australia's telcos are performing better than ever but no-one wants to mention it.

 

Plus more
 

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