Australia's telecommunication watchdog has issued its preliminary report this week, scoring the industry's tricky advertising techniques that take away the significance of premium communication services that telcos provide to consumers.

In its report titled 'Reconnecting the Customer', the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) urged industry players to embrace better ways to serve Australian consumers and the best form of doing that, said the agency, is to be honest on dispensing their advertising campaigns that lure subscribers to avail of their services.

ACMA chairman Chris Chapman said that the industry failed miserably on providing high-quality services to consumers by withholding important information about their products while at the same time reneging on their basic self-regulatory practices.

Specific issues such as 'cap' and 'unlimited' components of telco offerings were hit by ACMA as generally deceptive as the marketing ploy usually veer away from the very meaning of the product promises, which in the end were fraught with surprise and hidden charges.

The latest ACMA report has stressed that "the way in which the telecommunications industry in Australia deals with its customers must change ... immediately," hinting that stricter supervision will be adapted by the agency in light of the full roll out of the federal project National Broadband Network (NBN).

One imposing changes that the industry could witness soon is the more watchful eye of an ombudsman that would oversee the practices of the sector and any deviations from regulation in-place could lead to revocation of license to operate, once the ACMA proposal gets underway.

Chapman said that industry players need to still fine-tune their self-governing codes, clearly alluding to the draft recently submitted by industry group Communications Alliance, as he told the Sydney Morning Herald that "the industry recognises that they now need to look at their draft code again."

However, Communications Alliance chief executive John Stanton said in an interview with the BusinessDay that their report has pretty much picked up on the proposals outlined by ACMA on its new report.

Also, major telcos such as Telstra, Optus and Vodafone have maintained that they have been implementing notable changes that gradually raise the levels of their customer service departments.

The new report, which ACMA said is accessible to the public via the agency's official website, will be finalised by August this year yet before that, consumers and other interested parties could still file their submissions that the watchdog will definitely consider.