Overview

• After meeting Optus, Telstra and TPG leaders on Tuesday, Communications Minister Anika Wells introduced legislation to enshrine a Triple Zero custodian.
• The custodian will be embedded within ACMA with statutory powers to demand information, monitor performance and direct responses to emergency call failures.
• From 1 November, carriers must provide live outage data to emergency services and ACMA, conduct Triple Zero testing during upgrades and ensure call fallback to other networks.
• ACMA’s compliance probe into the 18 September Optus outage is ongoing, and Optus has commissioned independent reviews led by Kerry Schott and consulting firm Kearney.
• The September failure blocked at least 600 emergency calls across WA, SA and the NT and has been linked in reporting to three deaths, with a smaller 28 September disruption reported in NSW.