A Telstra outage that left people without reception for six days in regional WA has highlighted a regulation loophole with mobile technology not being considered an essential service.

Port Denison and Dongara are 353km north of Perth and in July the outage left many people out of reach.

One business, which relies on Telstra for its eftpos machines, estimated it lost up to $18,000 in sales as a result of the outage.

Port Denison resident Trish Mulcahy said the Telstra outage was disappointing.

"It leaves the country people quite vulnerable," she said.

"This has had quite a large effect on businesses being able to use their eftpos machines. They've had loss of trade and, God knows, people can't afford that these days."

Ms Mulcahy said the near week-long outage was a classic case of city bias.

"The reality is that this country is so city-focused that they're forgetting, rapidly, the people in regional areas in so many ways, and this is just another example," she said.

In November last year, more than 10 million Australians and 400,000 businesses were impacted by a 14-hour Optus network outage.

Not an 'essential service'

Mobile services are not considered as an essential service and there are no minimum service requirements that telecommunications providers need to guarantee, according to Australia's Telecommunications Ombudsman.

Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Cynthia Gebert said while there were universal service obligations for landlines, those minimum standards did not extend to mobile phones and internet services.

"In terms of your mobile, they've obviously got contractual obligations in that they are agreeing to provide a service, but … the universal service obligation is only for landlines," Ms Gebert said.

A call for change

Ms Gebert said the ombudsman would like to see more technology neutral requirements.

"Because ultimately phone and internet services are essential services like electricity, gas or water.

"It's going to be challenging to put that in place and I think that is really what we need to be tackling now. Does the current telecommunications obligations reflect how people us phone and internet services?

"It doesn't have the same status as an essential service as electricity, gas and water … but very much people are relying on it in the way that they conduct their lives and I think we really do need to ensure that it reflects how intrinsic it is to our lives."

The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications says mobile services are not included in the universal service guarantee "because of the difficulty of providing mobile service 'universally', that is, everywhere in Australia, no matter how remote, sparsely populated or untravelled".

No guarantees

Obligations on service requirements come from the federal government.

For landlines, there are guarantees that, if disconnected, service will be connected or repaired in a particular timeframe.

That timeframe differs for regional and metro areas. When those timeframes are not met, customers may be entitled to compensation under the customer service guarantee.

But there are no such rules in place for mobile services.

"The obligation to supply the mobile service, for example, is a contractual obligation, rather than a regulatory obligation," Ms Gebert said.

In 2021, the department said mobile service reached 99.5 per cent of Australia's population, covering around 33 per cent of the country's landmass.

Compensation

So when a mobile outage does occur, what compensation are customers entitled to?

It varies, the Ombudsman said.

"It will depend on the circumstances of the outage what customers might be entitled to," Ms Gebert said.

"The obligation to supply the mobile service, for example, is a contractual obligation, rather than a regulatory obligation. So we would look at what the right thing to do is in the circumstances.

Following the large-scale Optus outage last year, a review by the government recommended establishing a standardised approach for compensation when there are large-scale outages.

That recommendation was accepted by the federal government, but is yet to come into force.

Ms Gebert said people who were not satisfied with a resolution offered by a telecommunications provider had the right to complain to the ombudsman's office.

"We're free and independent and we'll work to get you a fair and reasonable outcome," she said.