A woman "unnecessarily harassed" by Telstra about her dead husband for almost a decade has slammed a major gap in regulation for failing to protect her as well as the public.

Jenny Moncur is warning other vulnerable families remain at risk.

"There'll be people out there who will go to their graves still being harassed," Ms Moncur said.

"I find that unforgivable."

The telecommunications regulator has also warned that without better protections there is a risk these incidents will continue to occur.

Ms Moncur's husband of 37 years, Royce, died in 2014 after being diagnosed with advanced late-stage kidney cancer.

Compounding Ms Moncur's grief was her nine-year ordeal with Telstra.

She begged the telco giant to stop sending her correspondence about her late husband's mobile phone account.

One email claimed in large font there was "good news" because credit remained on the account.

Her repeated calls and emails to Telstra did not make it stop, and complaints to the company and the industry ombudsman also failed.

Telstra's phone operators even requested to speak with her dead husband, which reminded her of a Monty Python skit about a dead parrot.

After Ms Moncur went public last year, the ABC was contacted by 20 other grieving families that were having similar battles.

They included a Tasmanian aged pensioner who broke down while opening another Telstra letter about his wife of almost 60 years.

It prompted Telstra to apologise again, set up a dedicated helpline for families and update its bereavement processes.

'Telstra has got away with it'

Ms Moncur made a complaint to the regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), hoping it would sanction Telstra.

Another family also complained.

The regulator found Telstra's conduct caused "considerable anguish for many bereaved families" and identified substantial gaps in customer management processes with ongoing communication for prolonged periods — despite the company being notified of the death.

But Ms Moncur was left bitterly disappointed after learning the company would not be penalised.

The investigation found Telstra's conduct did not breach the Telecommunications Consumer Protections (TCP) Code.

Ms Moncur said the code was failing the public.

"It's failed me, and it's failed many, many others."

The CEO of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), Carol Bennett, also criticised the lack of consequences.

"I think that's staggering, that ACMA find that Telstra have breached no standards," she said.

Ms Bennett claimed ACMA was a "toothless tiger" that was failing to hold the industry accountable under a system that needed an overhaul.

"This is a really significant, distressing problem, and it's one that needs to be addressed with fines that are commensurate with the scale of the problem."

Telstra's annual net profit was $1.8 billion for the past financial year and it provides more than 22 million mobile services.

ACMA investigation 'desktop shuffling of paperwork'

There are also questions about the extent of the regulator's investigation.

Last August, financial counsellor with the Bush Money Mob in Western Australia, Alan Gray, spoke out about a case in which he assisted an Aboriginal widow from Arnhem Land who was threatened with legal action by Telstra for a debt of a few hundred dollars.

The debt was owed by her late husband.

Telstra said it had no record of the woman informing it about her husband's death.

The issue was only resolved after Mr Gray became involved.

Mr Gray said the regulator should have conducted a systemic investigation.

"It's really hard to imagine that it was much more than a desktop shuffling of paperwork if they didn't bother to speak to [all] the affected customers," he said.

Industry code not holding companies to account

The regulator said its "extensive investigation" to determine how many other families experienced this problem was halted when it became clear Telstra's conduct did not amount to a breach of the code.

In a statement, ACMA's chair, Nerida O'Loughlin, called for change.

"There is nothing in the industry's own code of practice that holds telcos to account for such failures," she said.

"We have raised this with the telco peak body, Communications Alliance, and we have strong expectations that these deficiencies will be addressed.

The call for urgent change comes with the industry under significant pressure to increase consumer protections under the telecommunications consumer protections (TCP) code.

The code is under review but consumer groups including Choice, Financial Counselling Australia and the Indigenous Consumer Assistance Network have refused to participate.

In a joint letter, they claimed self-regulation had failed.

Ms Bennett said consumer groups were also concerned about inadequate protections for customers experiencing domestic and family violence, prevention of upselling or mis-selling of products and affordability checks.

ACCAN recently commissioned research to look at the regulator's enforcement record.

Researchers from the University of Technology Sydney examined the enforcement record of consumer protection rules between 2010 and 30 June 2023.

They found the regulator had conducted 487 investigations resulting in:

• 296 formal warnings
• 119 directions to comply
• 24 infringement notices with a total value of $6,143,160
• Three civil penalty orders obtained from the Federal Court totalling $1,077,625

Ms Bennett said the lack of big financial penalties was concerning.

She wants the maximum penalty of $250,000 under the TCP code to be increased.

"It is totally inadequate."

She said the current oversight of the industry was failing and called for direct regulation.

"It's not surprising when you put the fox in charge of the hen house."

ACMA said it operated under the Telecommunications Act and "co-regulatory codes."

It defended its enforcement record citing two recent penalties against Telstra for scam rule breaches and wrongly charging customers and Optus for breaching public safety rules.

Telstra did not respond to a question about how many complaints it had received from families of deceased customers.

Telstra's consumer executive Hamish Blank said the company had introduced a process to better manage authorised representatives in circumstances where a customer had passed away.

"We sincerely apologised to Ms Moncur for the stress we caused her at the time, and she accepted our offer of compensation," he said in a statement.

Telstra said it would continue to improve its practices.

Luke Coleman, the CEO of the industry's peak body Communications Alliance, said the sector was looking at closing the gap exposed by Ms Moncur's case.

The Telecommunications Consumer Protections Code review includes improvements to domestic and family violence protections and selling practices and will work on appropriate safeguards, the industry said.

The Communications Alliance pushed back on criticisms the industry was subject to light-touch regulation, instead describing it as "heavily regulated."

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said she was closely monitoring the TCP code review and was considering other reforms.

Ms Moncur spent her career helping others as a paramedic.

She said her experience with Telstra had motivated her to ensure other families were protected.

"I just can't walk past something that's so obviously wrong," she said.