Telstra has been fined $1.5 million for not letting customers keep their phone numbers when they switch networks. 

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) issued a penalty this week after finding that between March and July 2020, Tesltra suspended most of its local number porting operations. 

Telstra claimed that the decision was due to the impact of COVID-19 on “offshore operations”. 

ACMA says 42,000 customer accounts were either unable to move to another telco, or switch to Telstra, after the telco “unilaterally cancelled transfer requests that were scheduled to occur and stopped accepting new requests”.

“This was done without prior warning to other telcos, which were left not being able to help new and existing customers to transfer their service, while keeping their phone number.”

The regulator found that Telstra did not fully resume porting operations until July 2020, and took until October 2020 to clear its backlog of requests.

“We appreciate Telstra had difficulties due to COVID-19 and we took this into account in our enforcement actions, including the size of the financial penalty,” said ACMA chair Nerida O'Loughlin.

“However, it is clear Telstra, for a sustained period, did not have sufficient plans in place to comply with an important consumer safeguard that promotes competition in the telco market.”

Telstra also received a formal direction to comply with the Local Number Portability Industry Code, which carries a $250,000 fine for each contravention.