Weekly Wrap: Australia’s Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation asks the right questions

Australia’s Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation (UOMO) is the first serious attempt at defining D2D coverage and QoS, and it deserves more attention than it has had.

The legislation was introduced into Parliament in November 2025 and is currently at the second reading stage in the House of Representatives. The most recent update from the House is a debate on 28 May 2026; the final form of the legislation is still undecided. The Bill should be announced by 1 December 2027, but there is some flexibility. The minister could postpone that date by up to three years, so enforcement could be pushed toward 2030 even once the Bill passes.

UOMO would make Australian mobile operators Telstra, Optus and TPG Telecom “primary universal outdoor mobile providers, required to ensure voice and SMS coverage is reasonably available outdoors, on an equitable basis, across the country”.

The Bill states that operators are expected to meet the obligation largely through low Earth orbit D2D, layered on top of existing towers, adding roughly five million square kilometres of new coverage.

This is what makes UOMO interesting; it adds D2D into a statutory obligation with “equitable” access included in the object clause, rather than leaving it as a voluntary operator add-on.

For some, the Bill doesn’t go far enough in defining the QoS obligation. Consumer group ACCAN, in its consultation response, warned that “reasonably available” is left undefined in the legislation, creating “significant uncertainty” and leaving consumers “without enforceable rights to challenge subpar service”.

The lack of QoS definition is echoed in the recent Satellite Regulatory Playbook published by mobile industry association the GSMA. It notes that D2D offered without a mobile operator partnership “does not fit neatly within existing mobile or satellite service categories” and that where QoS frameworks exist at all for satellite, they are being retrofitted rather than designed in.

The emergency use case is one of the main points of disagreement. Current LEO-based D2D services generally support SMS only, not voice calls, but in Australia, emergency services can only be contacted directly by voice. ACCAN’s consultation response said it was essential that the government establish a text-to-000 service for as long as D2D remains SMS-only.

At the end of May 2026, the Bill was still at second reading, with the opposition parties having moved a formal amendment declining to give it a clean second reading, precisely because of this QoS definition and voice gap.

The opposition said that it “places a vague and uncertain obligation to provide ‘reasonable access’ on an ‘equitable basis’” and “legislates the use of technologies such as voice to satellite before it either exists at scale or is commercially available”.

Although many questions remain, the UOMO Bill represents a positive regulatory response to D2D. It should not be allowed to quietly transform into a mainstream service without anyone asking about coverage and QoS. Australia is, at least, trying to develop a framework.

Here is what else PolicyTracker reported on this week:

• Lithuania auctioned the 700 MHz, 1500 MHz and 2100 MHz bands, raising €29m
• At an ANFR workshop, French regulators said the current D2D regulatory situation is unsustainable
• Nepal’s government discharged the chair of the regulator because he did not want to assign spectrum to the state-owned MNO
• RSPGRSPG stands for the Radio Spectrum Policy … has published the finalised version of its Opinion on a 6G spectrum roadmap
• Japan has raised $40m in its first-ever spectrum auction