Summary

  • ACMA listed Skymesh at 115.0 per cent for TIO complaints versus provider complaints in April–June 2025, then 90.2 per cent in April–June 2026.
  • The figures compare reported complaint records. They do not establish what share of distinct customers escalated, whether a particular case was resolved, or why a provider’s ratio changed.

The arithmetic looks impossible only if the percentage is read as a share of people. A share of one customer population cannot exceed 100 per cent. ACMA’s table, however, calls this a ratio of complaints made to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) to complaints made directly to providers. Its published value for Skymesh was 115.0 per cent in April–June 2025. The same table now shows 90.2 per cent for April–June 2026.

Those figures are worth noticing, but the label needs care. ACMA says a higher percentage means a larger proportion of customers seeking external dispute resolution. Its glossary defines a “referred complaint” as one a consumer escalates to the TIO and the TIO then refers back to the provider; each telco reports the number of such complaints it receives each quarter. The ranking’s general notes say provider complaint counts exclude complaints escalated to the TIO unless otherwise specified. The published series therefore compares counts from two reporting streams and periods, without describing a case-by-case or customer-by-customer match.

That difference changes the question the ratio can answer. It can show how the count of TIO-referred complaints received by a provider compares with the count of complaints recorded directly by that provider under ACMA’s reporting rules. It cannot, from the public definitions alone, tell a reader that 115 per cent of customers escalated, that every TIO record belongs to a complaint counted in the provider denominator, or that the same share of people failed to obtain a remedy. It also cannot identify whether the year-on-year change reflects fewer referrals, more direct complaints, reporting composition, brand treatment, or some other factor.

The public table does not supply the linked records needed to distinguish those explanations.

ACMA’s wider scorecard contains several different units. For the 2025–26 financial year it reported 748,501 provider complaints, down 10.8 per cent, and said the proportion escalated to the TIO rose to 6.9 per cent from 6.6 per cent. Average resolution time fell from 5.9 to 5.4 days. Its quarterly dashboard separately reports complaints per 10,000 services, weighted days to resolve, and the TIO-to-provider complaint ratio. Each is useful for a different question; none is a direct measure of whether a named person’s problem ended well.

The TIO’s own annual reporting makes the unit problem visible. For 2025–26 it recorded 53,834 complaints and 162,885 contacts, including enquiries and phone calls. It separately reported that 14,953 people returned after their first referral to a provider. Those are not interchangeable totals. The TIO says one complaint can contain multiple issues, while issues are counted separately; its complaint totals exclude enquiries, first-contact referrals and withdrawn complaints. It also cautions that provider complaint counts do not represent the number of customers or services, and that a complaint does not by itself establish provider fault.

This is why a falling headline count should not be treated as a complete consumer-outcome score. The TIO reported fewer complaints overall, while complaints about mobile dropouts rose 22.6 per cent to 1,444 and connection-delay complaints rose 10.2 per cent to 4,719. Those issue counts can overlap within one case. Taken together, the figures show how totals, people, contacts, cases and issues can move in different directions without proving either improvement or deterioration in every customer’s experience.

The distinction now has a policy consequence. ACMA is consulting on a proposed Telecommunications Consumer Protections Industry Standard. The draft proposes quarterly reports to ACMA on mis-selling instances identified by a provider or brought to its attention by the TIO or direct customer complaints. Large providers would report from commencement, while smaller providers would receive an additional 12 months. ACMA is also asking whether providers should publish this mis-selling information. These are proposals, not requirements already in force.

If this reporting becomes public, the definition of a reportable instance will matter as much as the headline count. A customer may contact a provider more than once; an issue may be reclassified; a TIO referral may return to a provider; a single case may involve several alleged sales practices. A public total without source, date, case identity, provider, issue, status and outcome could collapse these different events into a number that appears comparable but is not. A privacy-preserving case key and clear rules for repeats, corrections and final outcomes would make aggregation more useful without publishing personal details.

The 115 per cent figure is therefore neither a verdict nor a statistical impossibility. It is a warning about interpretation: counts from separate stages can be divided, but the result is not automatically a rate for people or a measure of service failure. Australia’s next consumer-protection dashboard will be more credible if it keeps the event count visible while showing how cases move, what was resolved, what returned, and which outcomes remain unknown.

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