Triple Zero services need a new overseer

Australians presumed police, firefighters and ambulances were just a phone call away, never doubting the reliability of the Triple Zero emergency service for 65 years.

But repeated high-tech crashes have suddenly alerted Australians to their vulnerability in the face of the telco sector’s failures to live up to their duty as the cornerstone of public safety.

More than 450 Optus calls to emergency services failed last September as the network went down for 13 hours. Two deaths were linked to the outage. Then last July, Telstra failed twice, and the outages rippled across the nation, interrupting the daily lives of millions, and hundreds of calls to Triple Zero failed to connect.

A cross-party Senate inquiry into the Optus outage has recommended Telstra should be stripped of responsibility for emergency calls and the Triple Zero services should be handed over to an independent authority. Telstra and its predecessors have operated the Triple Zero call centre since 1961 and hold the contract through to 2032.

On a broader issue, the Senate committee also recommended the mandating of domestic mobile roaming for voice calls and text messages, forcing telcos to share their networks.

Obviously, the Triple Zero system needs repair, but there is considerable pushback against the Senate committee recommendations.

Both Labor and Coalition senators on the committee opposed an independent review of the communications authority and mandates for domestic mobile roaming. The Coalition wants further investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission into mobile roaming and opposition communications spokeswoman Sarah Henderson also called for a major independent review of the telecommunications sector while backing an accelerated pathway for text message communication with Triple Zero.

But one inquiry begetting another inquiry has the appearance of passing the buck, and the Australian public is entitled to be fed up with contemplating another lengthy delay.

In any case, while the consumer watchdog warned in 2017 that mandated domestic mobile roaming could lead to mobile network operators raising prices in regional areas, New Zealand and Canada have introduced the reforms and claim improved competition and access for customers.

The outages over the last year prove the system is no longer fit for use, not least because they have undermined trust in the telco sector’s overseeing of matters of life or death. Regrettably, the telco companies’ mishandling of the outages and their shambolic early responses suggests they have learnt little.

Australia’s economy will be better protected when essential services can continue operating through independent systems, and when we have tested contingency plans and rapid, transparent incident responses.

Australia cannot persist with having such a vital emergency service in the hands of private operators with records of failure that shatter the public’s trust and raise questions about the telcos taking their public responsibilities seriously. The Triple Zero service can no longer depend entirely on one carrier or one communications technology.

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