An ACMA investigation found 473 breaches of the rules relating to an incident on 1 March 2024, during which Telstra’s Triple Zero call centre was hampered in transferring calls to emergency services for 90 minutes.

Telstra initiated a contingency process to transfer calls received during the disruption, using a list of backup phone numbers but several of the phone numbers in the list were incorrect.

This resulted in 127 calls not being transferred to emergency services.

Telstra managed those calls by providing the callers’ details to the relevant emergency service organisations via email messages and phone calls.

While Telstra successfully managed 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 organisations due to the disruption, according to the ACMA.

ACMA member and consumer lead Samantha Yorke said it was concerning that breaches occurred because Telstra neglected to update its backup phone data.

“Telstra, as the emergency call provider, is at the centre 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,” Ms Yorke said.

Ms Yorke acknowledged that Telstra has historically had a strong record of compliance in its role as the national Triple Zero operator and made considerable efforts to keep the public informed during the outage.

“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,” Ms Yorke said.

The ACMA also notes the action Telstra has taken to rectify its processes following the incident, including updating its backup phone number list and appointing an independent consultant to conduct an incident review.

As Australia’s national operator of the Triple Zero service, Telstra is required to comply with obligations set out in the Telecommunications (Emergency Call Service) Determination 2019. The Determination imposes requirements in relation to the handling and transfer of calls made to emergency service numbers.