A telecommunications company has been lashed by the industry regulator for its "ongoing disregard" of its obligations.
Lycamobile, which was fined some $604,800 for failing to give customer data to a database used by police and emergency services last year, has been found to have breached a court-enforceable undertaking to improve its practices.
It was also directed to improve compliance with customer identification checks after failing to meet obligations on more than 4200 instances when signing up prepaid mobile customers, which can lead to phones that are hard to trace being used in crimes.
The company was hit with a further $186,480 penalty for the extra contraventions, with the Australian Communications and Media Authority finding Lycamobile hadn't taken action in the required timeframe.
"Lycamobile has shown an ongoing disregard for its obligations and the commitments it has made to the ACMA," chair Nerida O'Loughlin said.
"It consistently missed deadlines, provided inadequate reports and when we raised these matters on multiple occasions it gave subsequent commitments that it then failed to meet."
Ms O'Loughlin said Lycamobile had paid its fine and was "finally" starting to take its obligations seriously.
"Breaching obligations and not fulfilling commitments to the regulator has been costly for the company and caused potential harm to its customers," she said.
"We will continue to watch Lycamobile closely to make sure it's doing the right thing by its customers and the public."
