Transcript: ABC Newsradio 6/10/25

Presenter: The peak body for the telecommunication sector says Telcos are already taking steps to prepare their emergency call systems ahead of the disaster season. The communications minister will meet with Telstra, Optus, and TPG representatives tomorrow in the wake of the multiple Optus triple zero call outages, with one being linked to three deaths. Anika Wells has asked Optus, Telstra and TPG to outline how they’ll comply with a new requirement that they immediately notify authorities of outages.

Anika Wells: I’ll literally be laying down the law. Australians must be able to rely on our triple zero system and telcos must do better to give confidence back to Australians after the catastrophic failure on the part of Optus several weeks ago. It’s a good time for everybody to get together, make sure that our expectations are clear, and to prepare for natural disaster season ahead.

Communications Minister Annika Wells. From next month carriers will be legally obliged to share details of any outages in real time. And the federal government is fast tracking legislation to set up a triple zero custodian.

The peak body for the telco sector is the Australian Telecommunications Alliance. This spokesperson, Luke Coleman, says the new rules will tighten up the triple zero system.

Luke Coleman: The Triple zero ecosystem offers layers of protections for Australians, and there are new rules coming into place on the 1st of November that will really tighten up those protections. For example, they must wilt their network. Now what wilting means if their network is disconnected from their core network, they must ensure that calls could be made through alternative networks to get through to triple zero, something called emergency camp on.

Now, that’s what didn’t work a couple of weeks ago, but these new rules really tighten up the requirements around emergency camp on so that your phone can connect to any other available alternative network if your primary network is unavailable. It also introduces some new rules around requirements for telcos to notify regulators and government departments, as well as sharing information about outages with customers. So the people in the regulators and customers alike all stay informed about the status of outage. 

Presenter: It’s all very good and well, to have a rule which says that if your network is down, your customers must be able to piggyback onto another network, but as you just said, it didn’t happen last time. So what’s changed to make sure that that switchover will definitely happen? 

Luke Coleman: So there are a range of obligations on both network providers themselves that also device makers to ensure that that system works. Now emergency camp on, which is when your phone will connect to an alternative network if your main network is unavailable, that depends on your mobile handset. When it can’t reach its home network, it starts scanning for other available networks that it can latch onto to make a call. And so it’s important for people to remember that process is not instantaneous. This is not something that is a mobile network feature. Rather it’s a mobile phone feature. It can take 15 to 30 seconds for your phone to find an alternative available network. Now, for a lot of people that will feel like a lifetime if you’re in an emergency situation to be waiting 15 or 30 seconds for that call to connect. But that is a standard mobile phone feature. It’s a global standard in mobile phones that can take that period of time to connect. And really what these new rules do that come into play on the 1st of November, it tightens up the requirements on the mobile operators to ensure that that’s available, we need to remember it’s also a feature of mobile phones 

Presenter: Just to one other new regulation. We are going to see there is supposedly going to be a so-called triple zero custodian or an enforcer of compliance bought into being as a result of some of the tragedies that we have seen recently. What role do you envisage this so-called custodian doing? 

Luke Coleman: So the triple zero custodian was a recommendation of the Bean Review. The Bean Review was a review done by former ACMA chair Richard Bean into the Optus outage from a couple of years ago, and what that review found was there are many elements of the triple zero ecosystem, but no one single regulator or in this case the custodian that has end-to-end coverage of that broad ecosystem. There are obligations on network operators, there are obligations on device makers. There are a range of regulatory measures in place. And the idea behind the triple zero custodian is it will have overarching end-to-end responsibility for the triple zero ecosystem. Now that has been in development within the Department since the Bean Review landed following the last Optus outage. And the Fovernment has recently indicated that it’s fast tracking the legislation required to stand up that new body. 

Presenter: What sort of work’s being done ahead of bushfire season to make sure that our phone system still works during a natural disaster. We, we know and we appreciate that when you’re in the midst of a national disaster or a natural disaster, you know, the phone lines can go down, things get burnt down. We understand that. Is there a way to make the network more resilient? 

Luke Coleman: Yeah, that’s right, there will always be outages during natural disasters. The best thing we can do is to be as prepared as we possibly can as an industry for those outages. So telcos in the lead up to bushfire season, or if we know there’s a cyclone coming or a flood or any other kind of natural disaster, the telcos will be working very closely with emergency services to prepare as best they can to keep those networks up as long as they possibly can.

That can mean things like having battery backup that is installed at almost all mobile phone towers around Australia, but that battery backup does not last indefinitely. In many cases, it’s for eight hours and eight hours. In an emergency situation, you might not be able to get to that tower in time. Telcos will work to prepare, uh, diesel generators as backup. 

Again, they will need to be working closely with emergency services to ensure that they can get to those mobile tower sites to install those generators. That can be very tricky during a disaster. Roads are often inaccessible or emergency services have other requirements that will make it difficult for the telcos to do those installations. But you can rest assured telcos do work as hard as they can and very closely with emergency services operators to ensure that those backup facilities are available. Telcos also have other things called cows cow stands or cell on wheels. That’s like a portable base station that you can hook up to the back of a four wheel drive. You can drive that out to an area where a main mobile tower might have been impacted. Maybe there’s been a bushfire nearby that’s cut it off. There could be a range of reasons you might need to deploy those. 

So there really is layers of protection that telcos try to use to ensure that their networks are up as long as possible. It’s also important to remember that if the power goes out, the network goes out. Ultimately, everything is dependent on having access to electricity. What we found during, uh, the black summer bush fires was more than 90% of those outages were a result of power outages. So it’s really important for telcos to be working closely with emergency service operators with power companies, but also having their own backup power facilities available and pre-positioning them as best they can to try to keep those networks up and running. 

Presenter: Luke Coleman is spokesperson for the Australian Telecommunications Alliance. He was speaking with Sarah Morris.