How many hours of autonomy does a telecommunications site need?

There is no Australian regulation mandating a number of hours of battery backup at a telecom site, and this is widely misunderstood. The 2014 backup power determination was an information-disclosure instrument, not an engineering mandate, and it sunset on 1 October 2024. Subsequent ACMA rules concern outage reporting and consumer protection, not backup design. The one publishable Australian benchmark is the Commonwealth Mobile Network Hardening Program’s target of at least 12 hours for hardened regional base stations. Beyond that, reserve time is set by site criticality and restoration time, which is a design decision, not a compliance one.