ABC News 1 October 2026

Temporary Disaster Roaming

Host: Also from today, Australia’s three major telcos will be able to switch on mobile roaming if one of their networks goes down during a severe weather event. It’ll only be available where there is another network available for mobile users to roam onto, allowing them to make calls, text and use basic data. Luke Coleman is the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Telecommunications Alliance and joins me now.  

Luke Coleman: Morning.  

Host: First of all, could you just kind of explain to us what exactly temporary disaster roaming is?  

Luke Coleman: Sure. So if you’re living in a regional or a remote area and there’s a natural disaster, a bushfire, a flood or a cyclone, and it takes out one of the mobile networks in that area, what this means is that a surviving mobile network will be able to take on the traffic from that network which has gone down and you’ll continue to be able to make calls, send texts and use some low bandwidth data services like WhatsApp or iMessage, or check websites like Fires Near Me.  

Host: What does this mean though for people in regions where there is only one telco available to them? I know large parts of the Northern Territory in particular only have access to Telstra.  

Luke Coleman: Where the Telstra network is available, if there is a natural disaster occurring and you’re with another network operator, Telstra may be able to make their network available to those other network operators even if they don’t have a network in place there.  

However, it still does remain the case that if there is only one network available and that network faces an outage, you won’t be able to use temporary disaster roaming. When there’s only one network and it’s gone, there’s no other network there to pick up that traffic.  

Host: Will that switchover happen automatically or will people in these disaster zones need to sort of manually switch their phones over to the remaining provider?  

Luke Coleman: From a user’s perspective, there’s nothing that they need to do. It will be automatic. It will be done between the two telcos. So if one telco faces an outage, they’ll get in contact with the other telco with a surviving network. They will request that they activate temporary disaster roaming. That surviving network operator will then make an assessment to make sure that there is sufficient capacity on their surviving network to bring on that traffic. And if there is sufficient capacity and it’s safe to do so, they will then activate temporary disaster roaming.  

If you’re a user there’s nothing that you need to do. You will automatically be able to make calls, send texts and use some low-bandwidth data services on that surviving network once it’s been enabled.  

Host: As we understand, Luke, this will only be available in three disaster areas at a time. Is that right? And why was that decision made to limit it to only sort of three areas at once?  

Luke Coleman: The only thing worse than one network outage is two network outages. So we’ve had to put some guardrails on temporary disaster roaming, and that is designed to ensure that the surviving network stays up.  

If there was an influx of traffic, if you had lots of users jumping onto that surviving network, there is a real risk that the second network could also go down due to all of that new traffic coming on.  

So there are limitations around temporary disaster roaming. It will ultimately come down to an assessment by the operator of the surviving network that they can be assured that there is sufficient capacity available that they can activate temporary disaster roaming.  

Host: Have we seen disaster roaming rolled out overseas and how has it sort of worked there? What sort of, you know, challenges and successes have we seen?  

Luke Coleman: It has been used in a limited number of countries around the world. This is the first time that we’ve seen it operationalised in Australia. This has been an industry-led initiative, so over the last few months the Australian telcos have been pressure testing the service, so there have been field trials undertaken. Now the telcos are assured that the service is ready to operate. It’s ready to go from now, so if there is a natural disaster in a regional or a remote area, they are now ready to activate temporary disaster roaming.  

Host: Okay, it’ll no doubt be tested over summer, I suspect. 

ENDS