ACCAN Seeks to Mislead Australian With Triple Zero Claims

12 March 2026: The Australian Telecommunications Alliance has called out the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) for misleading consumers with dodgy “research” on the reliability of Triple Zero and telecommunications networks.

“The results of ACCAN’s so-called ‘Consumer Sentiment Tracker’ are grossly misleading, and appear to be deliberately designed to undermine public trust and confidence in the Triple Zero service,” said ATA CEO Luke Coleman.

ACCAN’s claim that “1 in 10 Australians (10%) reported that they or a member of their family were unable to reach Triple Zero from a mobile phone in the last 12 months due to a mobile outage” is best described as disinformation – false information that is intended to mislead.

“The telecommunications industry is united in its mission to ensure the Triple Zero ecosystem is as resilient and reliable as it can be. This disinformation is a poor reflection on ACCAN – an organisation which is supposed to represent consumers, not mislead them.”

The Triple Zero service responds to some 32,000 calls every day on average, and ACCAN’s headline appears designed to lead readers to conclude that that some 3,200 calls would be unable to get through to Triple Zero due to network outages – a figure which simply does not stand up to scrutiny.

During the 14-hour Optus outage in September 2025, some 600 calls were unable to connect to 000. This was an extremely rare occurrence – yet the logical conclusion of ACCAN’s statement would be that more than 5 times as many calls are unable to reach Triple Zero each day. There is simply no evidence to support such claims.

“Following the Optus outage, there is justifiably a high degree of public scrutiny around Triple Zero, including the ongoing Senate inquiry. The claims made by ACCAN today also deserve scrutiny – the research results and methodology, such as polling sample size and questions posed to respondents, must be released in full to they can be assessed in context. I have written to ACCAN requesting that they share the research results and methodology in full,” Mr Coleman said.

Telstra, as the Emergency Call Person, must meet strict service levels, ensuring that emergency calls are answered quickly and efficiently – 85% within 5 seconds and 95% within 10 seconds. Telstra regularly exceeds these targets, with the most recent reporting period (January 2026), answering 98% of calls within 5 seconds and 99% within 10 seconds on all days.