The Australian Communications and Media Authority issued a warning Friday to all telecommunications companies in the country to improve their service or risk more regulations and fines.

Among the changes that ACMA wants to see in the next five months are that subscribers must be informed by telcos when they are near limits to their bills. ACMA also sought to make it easier for mobile phone owners to compare offers from different providers.

The warning was ACMA's response to growing consumer complaints over poor service. In the first three months of 2011, the regulator received about 60,000 complaints from phone users.

"The ACMA is signaling its clear intent as to the changes that industry must make in order to improve customer care and address the underlying causes that have given rise to customer care problems within the sector," Smart Company reported.

ACMA's report recommends tools for phone owners to monitor their use and spending on data, calls and short messaging service. It also urges requiring all service providers to have a standard complaints handling procedure such as using customer care performance metrics, including total number of calls made by current subscribers and number of repeat calls.

ACMA banned the use of confusing terms in advertisements of phone services and set as the standard two-minute calls to compare offers of different telcos to consumers. The regulator also made prices of text messages and a metric of one megabyte of data as benchmarks for plan comparisons.

"We have closely consulted on these outcomes with consumers and industry and the overwhelming response has been that improvements are both urgent and necessary," Smart Company quoted ACMA Chairman Chris Chapman.