Mobile and internet reliability complaints increased 41.6 percent from October to December 2025, compared to the previous quarter.
The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) received 1961 national complaints from people without a working mobile or internet service, or faults taking too long to fix – the worst pain points in the quarter.
TIO Cynthia Gebert said she expected telcos to offer fair remedies early when the customer situation called for it.
“We need settings that match modern life. Rules need to set the standard for phone and internet reliability, balancing community expectations and what is realistic for the industry,” Ms Gebert said in a statement.
“When repeated failures cause someone ongoing inconvenience and stress, it impacts people’s wellbeing and they expect their telco to make it right.”
The spike was partly driven by telcos disconnecting mobiles that couldn’t reliably connect to emergency services, an action required by emergency service rules, the TIO said in a statement.
“The Optus triple-zero outage and some extended local internet outages across Australia also played a role in driving these complaints,” the statement said.
For the second consecutive quarter, complaints from people seeking compensation for non-financial loss (not involving privacy issues) increased 13.9 percent to 1138.
Encouragingly, there were fewer financial hardship issues in the quarter.
Financial hardship complaints fell 19.2 percent to 399 complaints compared to the previous quarter. Compared to the same period last year, financial hardship complaints were down 35.7 percent.
“Every hardship complaint still represents someone under real pressure who’s not getting the help they need, so there’s still work to be done,” Ms Gebert said.
In total, the TIO received 14,017 complaints for the quarter, an increase of 3.6 percent from the previous quarter.
In the digital platform space, increasing account access problems showed people still were not getting the help they needed, with complaints up 20 percent to 719 in 2025, compared to 2024.
“People feel trapped in automated systems with no way to reach a real person,” Ms Gebert said.
“These problems aren’t going away, but there is a path forward.
“The Government is proposing a digital duty of care and there’s an opportunity here to simultaneously fill the gap with a Digital Platforms Ombudsman.”
