Summary

  • ACMA’s open consultation would govern how telecom sales staff are rewarded, not only what they say to customers.
  • The draft remains unsettled; its key test is whether bonus rules, redress and reporting produce evidence that providers can use to detect and correct harmful selling.

A rule about the reward, not just the sales pitch

The Australian Communications and Media Authority is asking whether a telecom provider should be allowed to pay a salesperson a bonus when the sale that helped earn it was unsuitable or unaffordable for the customer. Its draft answer is conditional: remuneration may continue, but the provider must constrain the reward and be able to show that its selling system protects consumers.

The proposed Telecommunications (Consumer Protections) Industry Standard 2026 would cap a staff member’s total performance bonuses at 20% of annual base salary. It would also let sales volume account for no more than 30% of bonus eligibility. The balance would have to depend on customer-service feedback or similar measures that are not based on sales volume. The proposal does not ban sales incentives. It tries to change what they reward.

That distinction matters because the paper treats mis-selling as a system problem. A salesperson may have a script, training and a compliance rule, yet still face a payout that rewards extra products or contracts regardless of customer need. ACMA’s draft would require a written remuneration policy, training before a worker can earn incentive payments, and a senior executive ultimately responsible for implementing, operating and regularly reviewing the policy.

The rule would reach beyond the individual commission. ACMA says it intends the obligations to cover individual, team, store, business-unit and other collective rewards. A store-level bonus would count toward the cap for each staff member who receives value, including a quantifiable non-cash reward such as a gift card. This is an attempt to stop the same incentive being moved from an individual sales ledger to a team target or a different form of payment.

Why ACMA is leaving the code route

The draft follows a breakdown in the review of the industry’s 2019 Telecommunications Consumer Protections Code. The Australian Telecommunications Alliance submitted a substantially revised code in May 2025. ACMA declined to register it in October, saying the proposal did not meet the threshold for appropriate community safeguards. On 23 October, it gave the ATA a Notice of Deficiency about the existing code. A second revised draft arrived in November. ACMA then ended the code review and chose to prepare a regulator-made standard.

The consultation paper describes the problem in terms of both substance and enforceability. It says words such as “may” and “appropriately” left obligations ambiguous, while notes and guidance were not themselves enforceable. If a provider’s duties cannot be stated clearly, it is harder to determine whether the provider met them and what corrective action is available.

Section 125 of the Telecommunications Act 1997 provides a path for ACMA to determine an industry standard after a code is found deficient and the code-developer has been given time to address the problem. ACMA says it decided in early 2026 to use that power. The current draft is open for comment; it is not yet the rule that providers must follow. Consultation opened on 29 September and closes at 5 pm AEDT on 10 November.

The safeguards form a chain

The bonus limits sit beside rules on suitability, information and remedies. Before a sale, providers would need to give consumers clearer information about products and mobile coverage. The draft would prohibit selling a product unsuitable for a consumer’s disclosed needs, circumstances and financial situation. It also proposes stronger credit assessment requirements, including for bundled devices and small-business consumers.

If a provider becomes aware that a sale breached the responsible-selling rules, the draft would require it to withhold unpaid performance payments linked to that sale, take reasonable steps to recover money already paid where legally permitted, and suspend eligibility for future payments for at least three months. The customer could seek a remedy such as a refund, contract change or exit without charge. The draft also proposes remedies where mobile coverage fails to meet reasonable expectations based on information supplied by the provider.

ACMA would then receive quarterly reports on mis-selling known to the provider, including cases surfaced by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman or customer complaints made directly to the provider. Reports would be due within 30 business days after each quarter. Providers with at least 30,000 services would report from commencement of the requirement; smaller providers would receive another 12 months. ACMA says it is considering whether this information should also be made public.

The link between these controls is the important part. A consumer remedy addresses an individual sale after harm is raised. A payment rule changes the provider’s internal economics before the sale. A report can reveal whether the problem is isolated, concentrated in one channel, or recurring across teams. None of those steps proves that mis-selling will fall, but together they create more points at which a provider or regulator could identify a failure.

There is a recent reason the question is not theoretical. In its 2025 case against Optus, the ACCC said commission-based sales arrangements had clear potential to incentivise inappropriate conduct. That case concerned realized conduct and a court penalty; it does not show how ACMA’s proposed limits will work. It does show why a general instruction to “sell responsibly” may leave an unanswered question about what the remuneration plan makes valuable.

A compromise that still needs testing

ACMA’s paper records three kinds of stakeholder view: ban incentives outright, keep them with adequate guardrails, or give providers more discretion over rewards and responses to mis-selling. The authority describes its draft as a preliminary compromise between consumer safeguards and remuneration practices it considers necessary for a viable telecom industry. That is a proposal, not a finding that a 20% ceiling or a 30% sales weight is the right setting.

The draft covers more than the headline figures. It counts multiple annual payments toward the 20% cap and includes quantifiable store rewards. It limits sales volume’s share of eligibility rather than abolishing sales targets. But questions remain about how customer-service measures are defined, how a provider proves that a payment was not influenced by a breach, and how reporting should reflect providers of very different sizes.

These rules matter to connectivity because telephone and internet access now support ordinary transactions, identity checks and emergency contact. A network can be available while the retail relationship still fails: the customer may buy a service that does not match local coverage or commit to a product outside their needs or means. That does not make every sales dispute an infrastructure failure. It does make the retail control surface part of whether access is usable and sustainable.

The ACMA consultation page sets out the questions still before the authority. Until the consultation closes and a final instrument is made, the bonus caps, reporting duties and remedies remain proposed. The test for the standard will be whether providers can connect the reward they offer, the sale they observe and the correction they deliver—and whether ACMA can verify that chain from evidence rather than policy language alone.

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