SYDNEY, March 11, 2026, 10:57 AEDT
Telstra Group stepped up its fight against Australia’s proposed mobile coverage-map standard on Wednesday, arguing the draft would mark areas used by 1.5 million customers a month as having no service. The push came after the Australian Communications and Media Authority published industry submissions on March 10 and as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission backed tighter map rules. 1
The dispute matters now because ACMA must finalise the standard by March 31 and bring it into force from June 30. If the regulator keeps its current threshold, Telstra says it would have to strip about 1 million square km from maps it uses in a market where coverage still helps win share and revenue. 2
At the centre is -115 dBm, a measure of signal strength. ACMA’s draft would classify outdoor handheld coverage as good, moderate, useable or none, and treat signals weaker than that level as no coverage, drawing on international practice and the government’s national mobile audit. 2
Shailin Sehgal, Telstra’s group executive for networks and technology, wrote that any standard should reflect the “real world outdoor mobility experience.” He said about 57,000 emergency calls a year, 700,000 voice calls a day and 750,000 texts a day are made in areas below the draft threshold on Telstra’s network. 1
TPG Telecom, which operates Vodafone in Australia, said the test should be whether a phone can actually work, and pointed to testing at 20 locations where Telstra showed full coverage but calls were unlikely to connect. Optus told ACMA that -115 dBm was about the lowest level consistent with a reliable service and warned that softer thresholds would make maps less comparable. 3
The ACCC backed ACMA’s overall direction, saying current maps may not reasonably match what users get on the ground. It also warned that patchy transparency and different modelling methods leave consumers at risk of buying on unreliable information and make misleading-claims cases harder to enforce. 4
Still, the outcome is not settled. If ACMA holds the line, Telstra faces a smaller published footprint and pressure on one of its strongest regional marketing claims; if it softens the rule, rivals and the ACCC say consumers will still struggle to compare maps, while Telstra says the draft could also create confusion with its satellite-to-mobile messaging service and dull incentives for regional investment. 1
The timing is awkward for Telstra. Reuters reported on Feb. 19 that Australia’s top telecom posted a 9.4% rise in first-half profit, lifted its buyback to A$1.25 billion and said mobile income had reached A$5.77 billion, with Chief Executive Vicky Brady saying the buyback would “support earnings and dividend per share growth.” 5
That helps explain why the company is digging in. After those results, eToro analyst Zavier Wong called Telstra “one of the most defensive names on the ASX”; whether ACMA redraws the map or not, the new standard now looks set to shape how Telstra, Optus and TPG sell coverage to regional Australia in the months ahead. 5
