The Australian Communications and Media Authority has set its compliance and enforcement priorities for 2026-27. The focus is on areas of high risk of harm to consumers and on implementing new rules to better protect them. If you run customer communications, contact centre, or telephony for an Australian organisation, two things in this announcement should be on your radar. One is a deadline that has already passed. The other is a signal about where enforcement attention is heading.
The five annual priorities
The ACMA named five annual priorities for the year ahead: disrupting branded SMS scams, enforcing Triple Zero and public safety obligations, strengthening compliance with mobile phone equipment standards, enforcing new telecommunications protections for people affected by domestic, sexual and family violence, and implementing gambling advertising reforms. Three enduring priorities sit alongside them: preventing gambling harm, combatting spam and telco scams, and protecting vulnerable telco customers.
ACMA Chair Nerida O’Loughlin framed the agenda around rising consumer expectations. She said communications services sit at the centre of Australians’ economic and social lives, that consumers expect more from these services than ever, and that they want stronger protections when things go wrong. Her line for industry was direct. The ACMA will act where industry falls short.
The branded SMS change that already bit
The first annual priority, disrupting branded SMS scams, is not theoretical. It came with a live registration regime that changed how business text messages display from 1 July 2026. If your organisation uses a branded SMS sender ID, the name that appears at the top of a message such as ‘AusPost’ or ‘Med-Appt’, that ID needs to be registered under the new system. From 1 July, SMS and MMS sent using unregistered branded sender IDs display the word ‘Unverified’ instead of the brand name, and are grouped with messages from other unregistered senders, including potential scams.
The reach is wider than most organisations realise. ACMA Deputy Chair Adam Suckling noted that some small and medium businesses may not realise the changes apply to them, and pointed to dentists, GPs, solicitors, schools, childcare centres and franchisees as typical users of branded sender IDs. If you send appointment reminders, delivery updates, or billing texts under a business name, this is you.
The risk is commercial, not cosmetic. Suckling warned that failing to register may mean consumers miss important messages or stop trusting them, and that messages labelled ‘Unverified’ may be ignored or deleted, creating reputational risk and disruption. A booking confirmation that lands in the same thread as scam texts is a booking confirmation that gets deleted. For scale, Australians lost nearly $18 million to SMS scams last year, with many of those messages impersonating major brands. That is the problem the register exists to fix.
One trap is worth calling out. If a third party sends SMS on your behalf through a booking system, CRM, or marketing tool, do not assume registration has been handled. The branded name on those texts is yours, and the obligation follows the brand, not the platform.
What to do now
If you have not checked your status, do it this week. Start by working out whether your organisation sends branded SMS. If customers see a business name at the top of your texts rather than a mobile number, that is a branded sender ID and it needs registering. If you only text from a standard mobile or landline number, the new rules do not apply.
From there, contact your telco or message provider to confirm registration. Telcos and messaging providers have obligations to contact their business customers and help them complete the process. For third party platforms, confirm directly with that provider’s support team. Registrations have been open since November 2025, and applications can take several weeks to process, so the gap between sending an unregistered ID and getting it verified is real downtime.
Reading the wider signal
The SMS register is one item on a list, but the list tells you where the regulator is leaning. Four of the five annual priorities concern consumer trust and safety in communications: scam disruption, emergency access, equipment standards, and protections for people experiencing domestic and family violence. The 2026-27 priorities were informed by a public consultation process, and O’Loughlin was clear they identify areas of particular focus without limiting the ACMA’s work.
For any organisation running contact centre, CX, or telephony, the practical takeaway is that the channels you use to reach customers are now the channels under scrutiny. Branded SMS is the first deadline to land. It is unlikely to be the last. If you are not certain your customer messaging is compliant, or you want a clear read on where your communications stack sits against this year’s priorities, that is a short conversation worth having.
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