Prefer WhistleOut in Google
For the second year running, compliance and enforcement of Triple Zero and public safety requirements will be a key area of concern for the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).
Updated each financial year, ACMA's list of compliance and enforcement priorities outlines the areas where the regulator will focus its efforts. This attention from ACMA is in addition to a parliamentary inquiry into Triple Zero service outages, as well as ongoing scrutiny from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN).
The continued focus on emergency calls might not sound surprising, given the nation-wide media coverage of the Optus Triple Zero outage in September 2025. But it's noteworthy that ACMA had already identified Triple Zero as a priority months before the Optus outage occurred.
In November 2023, the Optus network experienced a full, national network outage for consumer services, lasting 14 hours. As part of this outage, more than 200 Optus customers were unable to call Triple Zero. (The telco claims the cause of this incident was unrelated to the 2025 Triple Zero failures.)
In November 2024, Telstra experienced a partial Triple Zero disruption, where its Calling Line Identification (CLI) system failed. The failure meant Telstra couldn’t automatically access the location and phone number of the caller, two factors that are critical in timely and accurate handling of an emergency call. Telstra CEO Vicki Brady gave a candid apology and reported the issue was solved within 90 minutes, but within that timeframe one man passed away from cardiac arrest.
In November 2025, it was discovered several Samsung devices released between 2015 and 2021 had a software problem preventing connection to the Vodafone network when making a Triple Zero call, if the Telstra and Optus networks were unavailable. The following month, a person using an older Samsung device couldn't access Triple Zero and died as a result.
As a demonstration of how front-of-mind this topic is for the Australia public, much of the reporting on this tragedy centred around Triple Zero discourse. One such example can be found under the headline "Latest Triple Zero tragedy – consumers need answers" from ACCAN.
This problem with Samsung devices was not fixable and the phones in question needed to be replaced. See our guide covering the Samsung Triple Zero issue for a full list of these handsets.
Also in November 2025, Vodafone advised its customers with older iPhones to update their software to ensure Triple Zero functionality worked as intended. The range of handsets was fairly wide, spanning from the iPhone 6 (released in 2014) to the iPhone X (released in 2017).
In December 2025, Apple announced that, in rare cases, iPhone 12 owners were unable to call Triple Zero thanks to a problem with the iOS operating system. The problem was fixed in software update.
Most recently, much of the discussion surrounding the Vodafone network outage from earlier this month centred around possible disruptions to Triple Zero. But while the Vodafone network itself was incapable of handling such calls, the telco stated emergency calls should still have been handed off to other available networks at the time.
These are only some examples of recent Triple Zero issues and mobile network disruptions, so it's understandable Triple Zero reliability would still be on the minds of many Aussies. Even Telstra is clearly still treating this as a special issue, as evidenced by the telco's unusual (but informative) blog post from May detailing what happens behind the scenes when a Triple Zero call is made.
Triple Zero issues are under reported
Not only had there been pre-existing incidents, it has since become apparent that Triple Zero issues are often under reported by the telco industry. According to ACCAN, this is despite overwhelming public support for enforceable minimum reliability standards.
For example, in its submission to the ongoing parliamentary inquiry, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman stated "The TIO receives daily outage notifications from the relevant carriers, although it is very rare for these outage notifications to indicate issues that specifically relate to the Triple Zero service."
The ombudsman outlined how providers aren't currently required to notify the TIO when outages affect Triple Zero calls, though clarified that some carriers have begun to do this.
The CEO of ACCAN, Carol Bennett, told WhistleOut "Our research attempts to establish the qualitative experience of the Triple Zero caller who cannot get through. Even where some failed Triple Zero call attempts are captured in network records, that data may not reveal what the person trying to make the call actually experienced. This is a glaring gap in the information telcos are able to provide."
When addressing a parliamentary committee, ACCAN stated "unsuccessful call attempts often cannot be detected by telco network operators if the call has not registered on the network." Bennett further commented on this to WhistleOut, saying "This seems to be an admission that the system is blind to the people it doesn't see."
Public confidence is declining
Earlier this month, ACCAN announced nearly half (43%) of Aussies are worried a Triple Zero call could fail during an emergency. These alarming figures were included in a report snapshot covering two independent surveys conducted three months apart.
"The purpose of repeating this research was simple," said ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett in a press statement. "We wanted to test whether our earlier findings reflected genuine consumer experience or whether they were a statistical outlier... The results were remarkably consistent."
And confidence is declining further, with 22% saying their trust in Triple Zero calls had dropped over the past two years, versus 12% who stated it had increased and 65% for whom it remained the same. Just 52% of respondents felt the country's current network reliability for emergency calls is good enough.
The snapshot also outlined alarming figures surrounding the regularity with which Triple Zero attempts fail. In the past 12 months, 18% of Australians who contacted Triple Zero for a genuine reason were unable to connect on their first attempt. The advocacy group also found one in 10 respondents reported they or a family member were unable to contact triple zero due to a mobile outage.
The types of failures outlined varied. They included: delays before reaching an operator; no dial tone; unclear audio; phantom signal where the phone showed coverage, but the call would not connect; calls dropping before anyone answered; and complete silence with no indication of what was happening.
Alex Angove-Plumb
Digital Content Editor
Related Articles
