Mandate domestic mobile roaming and strip telcos of Triple Zero, inquiry recommends

A Senate inquiry into the September 2025 Optus national outage, which left hundreds of people unable to call Triple Zero and was linked to multiple deaths, has called for sweeping changes to the telecommunications industry.

“Australian telcos are now on notice,” said Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who chaired the inquiry. “This is the end of the era of self-regulation.”

The inquiry’s final report, which was supported by Labor and Coalition members, goes further than the earlier report into the 2023 Optus outage. The nationwide Telstra outage in July has increased momentum for fundamental change to the industry.

The best approach for the federal government may be to start all over again with a new telecommunications act that is better suited to the modern world.

Key recommendations

Telstra is currently contracted until 2032 to operate the Triple Zero system. The final report of the Senate inquiry recommends Telstra be stripped of this duty, and for a new statutory authority to be given control of the system.

In 2025, the Australian government introduced the Triple Zero Custodian in an effort to bolster Triple Zero. The custodian was tasked with overseeing the Triple Zero system. The report recommends the government require the custodian to comprehensively review how welfare checks are carried out across the telecommunications system.

The inquiry also recommended that the government mandate domestic roaming. This would enable mobile phones and other devices to connect to the mobile network using any available infrastructure, irrespective of who owns and operates it.

A domestic roaming declaration has been a hot topic for the past 30 years.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission recently launched a year-long inquiry into declaring domestic roaming. This follows three earlier inquiries into domestic roaming – all of which recommended against it.

In recent months, the National Farmers Federation, Australian Communications Consumer Action Network and other organisations have called for domestic roaming to be introduced immediately.

In its January 2026 survey of the Australian economy, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development also criticised the lack of competition in Australia’s telco market. It said barriers to entry are “particularly high in regional areas, where coverage is often limited to a single provider’s network infrastructure”.

The organisation added that this lack of competitive pressure has contributed to poor service and high costs. It said infrastructure-sharing obligations were needed to address this problem.

The inquiry’s report also includes a recommendation that people be able to text message to Triple Zero. We can now send text messages over low Earth orbit satellites. So this measure would provide another way to connect to Triple Zero during an emergency. It would be especially important in areas with poor mobile coverage or performance.

Among the other recommendations are reliability and performance standards for telecommunications companies, as well as automatic compensation for customers affected by an outage.

What should the government do now?

Current legislation governing the telecommunications industry was written at a time when the focus was deregulation and competition. Today the core of the legislation should be consumers, safety, reliability and performance.

The inquiry strongly criticised the Australian Communications and Media Authority for failing to adequately regulate the telecommunications industry. It called for an independent review of the authority. It also called for the authority to be given greater investigative powers in relation to telecommunications and Triple Zero obligations.

The inquiry has provided the government with a comprehensive blueprint for action. Importantly, it has bipartisan support from the inquiry members.

Over the next decade, there will be significant change to the technologies used to provide telecommunications. For example, low Earth orbit satellites could soon start offering voice, data and text to mobiles. This will also increase competition, as will the introduction of domestic roaming.

Updating the current telecommunications legislation isn’t enough to prepare for this change. What’s needed is an entirely new, modernised law to lead the telecommunications industry into the future.

Timing is everything when it comes to reforming an entire industry. Support for the government to act now is overwhelming.