(SOURCE: JOEY CSUNYO ON UNSPLASH)

The Australian Parliament has passed the landmark Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation (UOMO) bill, requiring the country's three major telecom operators – Telstra, Optus and TPG Telecom – to provide baseline outdoor voice and SMS services that cover the entire country.

The new law is expected to provide better connectivity to Australians living in rural and remote communities, boosting coverage in some of the country's most hard-to-reach places.

While terrestrial mobile coverage is widely available within populated areas, only around a third of the Australian landmass has coverage.

"This is an important update to the universal services framework that makes sure our laws better reflect the way Australians communicate today," Communications Minister Anika Wells said in a statement.

"The new laws also enable the government to set minimum performance and reliability standards for mobile carriers to ensure they are delivering the services that Australians need and deserve," she added.

It is expected that telecom operators will provide universal outdoor mobile coverage by combining their existing terrestrial mobile coverage with direct-to-device (D2D) technology, which is delivered via low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite platforms.

The bill is due to come into effect on 1 December 2027. However, the Minister for Communications has the flexibility to adjust or defer requirements until 2030, depending on market and technology readiness.

For the first time, the new law empowers the Minister for Communications to set standards, benchmarks and rules that mobile service operators must adhere to in order to provide high-quality and reliable services. The minister has discretion over coverage areas, costs and funding, as well as over whether Triple Zero capabilities will be included, when the service will be delivered and what fault rectification measures will be implemented.

The Australian government will be working closely with industry and stakeholders on the rollout.

Meanwhile, Luke Coleman, chief executive of the Australian Telecommunications Alliance, has expressed concerns that the special spectrum required for satellite services has not yet been allocated and that the technology still needs to be integrated into networks.

"There's still a few things that the industry needs to get through before this becomes a normal operational commercial service," Coleman said, as quoted by the Australian Broadcasting Company.

He pointed out that because Australia currently has no intention of building a sovereign LEO satellite capability, the responsibility would fall on telcos to negotiate commercial agreements.

"We are talking about services in areas that are by definition not commercially viable," Coleman said. "So, a real part of the challenge is how these can be sustainably funded."

Missed opportunities

The legislation has been widely welcomed by agricultural and regional advocacy groups, who see it as a vital step forward in terms of rural safety, business operations and emergency management, although they did express some reservations.

"The Australian Government and telco providers must ensure the reforms deliver reliable, affordable services and real improvements on the ground, alongside continued investment in regional telecommunications infrastructure," the NSW Farmers group stated in a social media post.

The group pointed out that the bill could have been used to address a more ambitious regional connectivity agenda, which could have included the introduction of mandatory domestic roaming.

This would have forced telecoms companies to allow their customers to automatically switch to another provider's network infrastructure whenever they were outside their own provider's coverage area.

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) said that the new law failed to deliver immediate protections in terms of compensation, reliability, performance standards and domestic mobile roaming.

"The UOMO Bill is a fundamentally vital connectivity safety net that will help Australians share the benefits of cutting-edge satellite technology," ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett said in a statement. "But make no mistake – there are many missed opportunities here."

"Until roaming and enforceable reliability standards are in place, Australians have no guarantee they can connect when it matters most. And without rules around compensation for outages and loss of service, we are again relying on telco good-will," she added.