Telstra pays another IPND compliance fine

Telstra’s ongoing Integrated Public Number Database IPND woes continue, with the carrier paying another non-compliance fine, this time just over $300,000, to the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

The carrier has also offered the ACMA a court-enforceable undertaking that it will conduct an independent review of its “IPND compliance uplift”, and provide the regulator a quarterly IPND data report.

Announcing the fines, the ACMA said Telstra had failed to provide accurate details for “thousands” of customers.

Telstra’s issues go back to 2021, when it was fined $2.5 million for failing to provide details of nearly 850,000 silent and unlisted phone numbers to the IPND.

At the time, the carrier committed to improving its IPND compliance, and instituted a monitoring arrangement.

That led Telstra to discover a further 19,000 compliance issues since October 2010, which it self-reported to the ACMA in September 2022. That included incorrectly flagging 600 silent numbers for listing in directory services.

Later in 2022, Telstra blamed its silent/unlisted number errors on "misaligned databases".

Today, ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said the carrier “needs to focus on completing the [IPND uplift] program and making sure it is fully compliant with these rules.”