Telstra Pays $1.9m Fine Following Emergency Call Failure

Australian mobile network operator Telstra has been fined more than AU$3 million ($1.9m) following its 90-minute Triple Zero outage earlier this year.

Telstra has paid the fine, as confirmed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), which said the fine was handed to the telco for a failure to comply with emergency call rules during a technical disruption at its Triple Zero emergency call center.

An investigation conducted by the ACMA found 473 breaches of the rules, during the outage, which occurred on March 1, 2024.

Triple Zero (000) is Australia's main emergency service phone number.

A few weeks after the outage, Telstra said that it was down to a combination of a "technical fault, an issue in our backup process, and a communication error that occurred in the heat of the moment."

During the incident, several calls failed to transfer, with one man from Victoria dying of a cardiac arrest in this period.

ACMA noted that its investigation found Telstra initiated a contingency process to transfer calls received during the disruption, using a list of backup phone numbers. The regulator noted, however, that several of the phone numbers in the list were incorrect, resulting in 127 calls not being transferred to emergency services.

Despite being able to transfer the remaining 346 calls using the backup phone list, Telstra could not provide the caller’s digital location information to the emergency service organizations due to the disruption, added the ACMA.

“Telstra, as the emergency call provider, is at the center of this critical public safety service. As such, it must have fail-safe systems and processes in place at all times. In this circumstance its systems and contingency plans failed people in real need,”

said ACMA member and consumer lead Samantha Yorke.

“Telstra has been open and apologetic about the outage, communicated effectively to the public, and took a variety of immediate actions when problems were identified. These actions go a long way to restoring the community’s trust in this critical service."

The ACMA did state that Telstra has taken action to rectify its processes following the incident. This has included an update of its backup phone number list and the appointment of an independent consultant to conduct an incident review.