A government body has called for the reclassification of mobile services. 

Australia's reliance on mobile technology is high, with over 39 million mobile accounts. However, mobile services are not classified as essential, a gap highlighted by a recent six-day Telstra outage in regional Western Australia.

“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," she explained. Unlike landlines, there are no legislated minimum service guarantees for mobile services,” says Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Cynthia Gebert.

Ms Gebert is calling for regulatory changes to reflect modern usage. 

She emphasised the necessity of treating mobile and internet services as essential utilities akin to electricity, gas, and water. 

“It's not the old school way of how people engage with phones. It actually needs to reflect how people are accessing essential services,” she told ABC reporters.

The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications states that mobile services are excluded from the universal service guarantee due to logistical challenges of providing universal mobile coverage across Australia's vast and sparsely populated areas. 

Despite mobile services reaching 99.5 per cent of Australia's population, this coverage only spans about 33 per cent of the country's landmass.

Following a significant outage involving Optus last year, a government review recommended a standardised compensation approach for large-scale outages. While this recommendation has been accepted, it is yet to be implemented.

Ms Gebert says she can assure consumers that those dissatisfied with their telecommunications provider's resolution can lodge complaints with the ombudsman's office. The outages have sparked a review of current telecommunications regulations.