Luke Coleman, CEO ATA Speech to CommsDay Summit

CommsDay Summit, Sydney

Tuesday 2 June 2026 4:00pm 

Good afternoon everyone, it’s great to be here again at the CommsDay Summit.  Thanks to Grahame and the CommsDay team for the invite to speak.  

Today, I want to provide a ‘state of play’ for the Australian telecommunications sector. Where we are, how we got here, and where we need to go.  

I’ll divide my remarks into three parts.  

First, I want to outline the problem statement. The ‘where we are’ and ‘how we got here’. 

Second, I’ll describe what changes we need to make if we’re going to address where we are.  

And third, I’ll look to the future – where we need to go, and what issues we must successfully address to restore our industry’s reputation.  

So let’s start with the problem statement.  

For those of you who attended the ‘Restoring telecoms reputation’ session yesterday, you would have heard from Michele Levine, CEO of Roy Morgan Research.  

According to Roy Morgan’s ‘Risk Monitor’ index, telecommunications is Australia’s most distrusted industry.  

More distrusted than supermarkets, social media, gambling.  

More distrusted than real estate agents, big pharma, oil and gas.  

And perhaps most devastatingly of all, more distrusted than politicians and government. 

If you want to know what the bottom looks like, it’s when you’re looking up at casinos and real estate agents for advice on trust. 

The charts she put on display during her presentation showed that we are not just distrusted a bit worse than other sectors. Distrust in telcos is worse than all other sectors on the scale by a significant margin.  

This is where we are. And that is the problem statement which we must solve. 

So, how did we get here?  

I’m sure you’ve all heard the old adage that trust takes years to build, and seconds to break.   

But in our case trust was not broken by just one major event, but five years’ worth. 

In 2020, the ACCC raised an unconscionable sales conduct case against a major telco.  

In 2021, that case resulted in a $50 million fine, the second-highest penalty imposed under the Australian Consumer Law at the time.  

In 2022, another major telco was subject to a cyberattack and data breach, which led court cases by the Privacy Commissioner¹, the ACMA², a class action lawsuit³, an AFP investigation⁴, and millions of Australians having their personal data compromised. 

In 2023, we saw a national mobile network outage that led to an ACMA investigation⁵, a Senate inquiry⁶, a Government review⁷, and a $12 million fine⁸. 

In 2024, we had the closure of 3G, which led to another Senate inquiry⁹, a Ministerial intervention, a delay the process¹⁰ and a requirement to block phones that couldn’t call 000¹¹, and later, a new regulated standard for mobile coverage maps – because the public didn’t trust what they were being told¹². 

That same year, we saw another unconscionable sales conduct case brought by the ACCC against another major telco. 

In 2025, there was the Triple Zero outage, another ACMA investigation¹³, another Senate inquiry¹⁴, another Government review¹⁵. At the same time, a $100 million fine for that unconscionable sales conduct case¹⁶.  

And last but not least, in 2026, was saw the rejection of the Telecommunications Consumer Protections Code or TCP Code, where the regulator justifiably cited these events in its rationale for directly regulating consumer protections. 

Any one of these events on their own would have had an impact on the public’s trust in the telecoms sector.  

But the cumulative effect of these events steadily remaining in the public’s consciousness over a five-year period has resulted in us being Australia’s most distrusted sector. 

It should be a sobering thought for all of us. 

I expect that many of you in the audience are probably looking at me right now and thinking, Luke, isn’t it your job to defend the sector? Who hired this guy? Did he pick up Nerida O’Loughlin’s speech by mistake? 

Admittedly, it’s probably a career-limiting move for me to use the industry’s largest event to publicly list the sins of the companies that pay my salary.  

But I do so deliberately. Because if we are to ever regain the public’s trust, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. 

That is exactly what I am doing: we have a problem. We are Australia’s most distrusted sector.  

And the onus is on us, as an industry, to take responsibility for that, to address it, and to turn it around.  

So that’s part 1: where we are, and how we got here.  

Now, onto part 2: what are we going to do about it? 

To quote the modern philosophers, Lisa and Homer Simpson, “did you know that the Chinese use the same word for ‘crisis’ as they do for ‘opportunity’? Yes, Crisitunity!” 

A more high-brow version of that sentiment came from Barack Obama’s chief of staff, who said you should never let a serious crisis go to waste. 

Well, we have a serious crisis on our hands, and it is entirely of our own making.  

So where are the opportunities to rebuild trust? 

One small thing we can do, is for our industry to speak with a clear and consistent voice.  

We need to be best positioned to address consumer issues, technical issues, and operational issues collaboratively.  

And we need to have a unified and consistent approach to advocacy on the issues that matter to us as a sector.  

Over the years, our industry has had a number of voices that have represented the sector’s interests. 

In the very early days of competition there was SPAN, the Service Providers Action Network, and ACIF, the Australian Communications Industry Forum, which merged to become Communications Alliance twenty years ago, in 2006.  

There was the Internet Industry Association which merged with Comms Alliance in 2014. 

There was the Telco Together Foundation, which was the industry’s voice for positive social impact.  

And for more than 30 years, AMTA, the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, has been the trusted voice of the mobile industry. 

The ATA began the process of clarifying our representation last year, when we were known as Comms Alliance and we reformed our membership to exclude digital platforms.  

We renamed the organisation the Australian Telecommunications Alliance to make it clear that we represented telcos, to the exclusion of all others.  

We reformed our Board to appoint the CEOs of the telecoms industry as Directors, and in January the new Board met for the first time. 

That might not sound like a big deal, but to my knowledge it marked the first time in our sector’s history where the CEOs of Australia’s major telcos made the decision to sit together at the Boardroom table with a shared ambition to improve the industry’s standing. 

There is a recognition, at the highest level, of the gravity of the problem we must collectively address.  

And just in case Anna Brakey from the ACCC is still here, all Board meetings are conducted under a strict competition protocol with a lawyer present to keep everyone in line. 

And now, we are taking the next step to provide a strong and unified voice for the telecoms sector.  

The merger of AMTA and the ATA. 

Yesterday, each organisation invited members to special general meetings where we will seek their support for the two organisations to become one. 

The proposed merger is an opportunity to bring together the complementary strengths, expertise, and history of both organisations for the benefit of the entire industry. 

Together, we will provide a more coordinated and effective voice for the sector, while recognising and building on the longstanding contributions of both organisations and their members.  

Together, we will put the industry in the best position to deliver for consumers, uniting the broad range of participants in the Australian telecoms ecosystem. 

Together, we will deliver:  

• a strong, unified voice for the industry;  

• strengthened advocacy for the sector;  

• and complementary expertise and resources to strengthen engagement with consumers, government, regulators and other stakeholders. 

Together, we can provide more effective representation, with broader capability and insights than either organisation could provide on its own. 

I’ve been fortunate over recent months to have worked closely with AMTA’s CEO, Louise Hyland, as we’ve gone through a due diligence process and agreed to the terms of the merger.  

We are committed to ensuring that the expertise, programs, committees and member value of both organisations continues to be recognised and strengthened in the merger. 

One industry body will provide full coverage of regulatory, technical, and operational issues impacting telcos, equipment suppliers, and a broad range of other industry participants – including TowerCos, messaging and application providers, and more. 

And it will enhance our capacity to provide expert advice on the capabilities of Australia’s critical digital infrastructure, covering fixed-line, mobile, and satellite connectivity; as well as issues related to mobile devices and other services provided by the sector. 

The case for a merger is strong. 

There is no longer a clear dividing line between the issues impacting ATA members and AMTA members.  

There are no longer neat categories for fixed-line issues, mobile issues, or even satellite issues.  

Virtually all telcos offering home broadband on the NBN also offer a mobile service as an MVNO.  

All telcos, fixed and mobile alike, are operating in an environment of heightened expectations for network resilience. 

All telcos, fixed and mobile alike, are subject to the same cyber security regulations and critical infrastructure obligations. 

All telcos, fixed and mobile alike, are subject to the same consumer protection regulations such as the Financial Hardship Standard, DFSV Standard, and the Scams Prevention Framework. 

Both AMTA and the ATA have been speaking out on the need to reform planning rules to make it easier to deploy digital infrastructure.  

AMTA should be commended for the impact of its ‘Future of Mobile’ report which provides a clear roadmap for reform, and undoubtedly influenced the Government’s recent announcement of a process to accelerate approvals.  

In recent years, the ATA’s work has been largely focussed on mobile issues, including device-blocking requirements under the Emergency Call Service Determination, mobile network and device testing arrangements with the UTS National Telecoms Resilience Centre, the establishment of the SMS Sender ID register, the updating of mobile device technical standards, and the Device-End-to-End Service Testing group. 

A unified industry body will be able to better represent the sector’s interests than either organisation can on its own. 

Under the proposed merger, AMTA’s operations will be brought into the ATA.  

All AMTA members will be invited to become members of the merged organisation. 

AMTA’s existing committees and staff, and the important work they do, will continue uninterrupted while we undertake an operational review post-merger. 

The Boards of each organisation have given their approval. 

And now, to the many ATA and AMTA members in the audience today, we ask for your support too.  

Member approval will be sought later this month, and if successful, the merger will have a target completion date of June 30. 

On July 1, we will have a united industry body with a strong and unified voice. 

This is one small but important step in our long-term goal of rebuilding trust, and restoring our sector’s reputation. 

So now I’ll turn to the third part of my speech, with a look into the future.  

Where we need to go, and what issues we must successfully address to restore our industry’s reputation. 

When we’re starting from the position of the most distrusted sector in Australia, clearly the way we’re working is not working. 

We must rebuild trust with customers, and this means getting the basics right. 

The Telecoms Industry Ombudsman, Cynthia Gebert, spoke at yesterday’s ‘Restoring Telecom Reputation’ event, where she laid bare the issues that too many consumers still struggle with in protracted complaints against telcos.  

We should all take heed of her advice, when she said: “Trust will be rebuilt by choosing to do what’s fair – before there’s failure and before anyone forces the choice on you.” 

While complaints to the TIO remain consistently at the lowest levels in twenty years, we must do more to remove pain points for customers.  

Another speaker at yesterday’s event was Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine, who said that telcos must design for uncompromising reliability, fair value, and visible accountability to restore trust with consumers.  

If outages and network disruptions have been a key factor in losing trust, then reliable and resilient networks will equally be a key factor in restoring trust.  

Telecoms networks are critical national assets. 

The services that this industry provides are absolutely fundamental to the everyday lives of Australians. 

Access to connectivity is like access to oxygen – it is so essential that nobody ever thinks about it, until you can’t access it – and then it’s the only thing you can think about. 

Australians rightly expect telecoms networks to just work. 

They expect that when they call Triple Zero, the call will just work. When they tap their phone to pay at their local café, the transaction will just work. When they log on to their morning Teams meeting, the call will just work.   

And when it doesn’t, customers lose trust in our ability to do what we’re here to do.  

But on the positive side, this is also the way we restore trust.  

When telecoms networks just work, we build trust. And when networks inevitably face outages, we build trust by ensuring they’re fixed as quickly as possible. 

We’re honest and upfront about what went wrong, and we take accountability to make things right. 

No infrastructure is immune from outages, whether it be telecoms, energy, gas, water, transportation.  

It’s virtually guaranteed that at some time today, a backhoe will cut a fibre line and knock out services. The telco is not at fault, but it is responsible for getting it fixed.  

We will restore trust by ensuring that outages are rare, and when they do occur, they are fixed quickly and transparently.  

We restore trust by being prepared when natural disasters strike.  

Telcos can’t prevent the next cyclone. or bushfire. or flood.  

And telcos aren’t at fault when a natural disaster leads to outages. But we restore trust by being as prepared as possible, and taking responsibility for fixing outages when they occur. 

Digital infrastructure is the ultimate critical infrastructure – every aspect of our modern society depends on connectivity being available, reliable, and resilient.  

And in the case of mobile networks, a fundamental input to availability is spectrum. 

The ACMA has recently concluded its process to set prices for the allocation of mobile spectrum. 

And now that process is complete, decisions makers in Government now face the question: are mobile networks critical national infrastructure, or are they not? 

Because if they are critical national infrastructure, then one would expect Government to have the policy objective of ensuring that they provide as much coverage as possible, as much capacity as possible, and that they are as resilient as possible.  

All of those things require very, very significant amounts of investment. 

Do we have policy settings in place that encourage or incentivise mobile network operators to make those investments? 

Do we have policy settings in place that treat mobile networks as critical national infrastructure? 

Networks that are expected to be available everywhere, for everyone, all the time? 

Well, in the space of just over a week, we saw two contrasting announcements that answer this question. 

The Federal Budget included no new spending to improve network coverage, capacity, or resilience. Not one dollar.  

And just over a week later, telcos were handed the bill to keep using the spectrum that they cannot operate without: $7.3 billion. 

And this is in an environment where telco are, on average, not making a return on investment above their cost of capital.  

Consider those facts, and decide for yourself whether we have policy settings that treat mobile networks as critical national infrastructure. 

We, as an industry, recognise that we must do our part to rebuild trust.  

We will do that by ensuring that the networks we operate provide the coverage, capacity, and reliability that Australians expect. 

And if we agree that these networks are critical to Australia’s social fabric, then we should also expect Government to have policy settings in place that support those objectives. 

So I’ll conclude with a brief recap of my remarks today.  

We are Australia’s most distrusted sector. That’s where we are. That’s the problem we must solve.  

Addressing this problem will require us to work collaboratively as an industry, and the establishment of a strong and unified industry body, through the merger of the ATA and AMTA, is one small but important step in that process.  

And finally, we must get the basics right to restore trust with customers.  

Our industry provides critical national infrastructure, and we need the right policy settings in place to support investment which ultimately benefits all Australians. 

Thank you.