Australian telcos face new outage disclosure and Triple Zero rules

Australia’s telcos face a raft of new rules in the wake of the Optus outage, around how they communicate with customers during an incident and sharing post-incident reporting with the government.

The changes come after as part of the federal government response to the November 2023 Optus outage, which had wide-ranging impacts on consumers, businesses and emergency services.

At a whole-of-industry level, the sector will be subjected to “new rules mandating how, what and when telecommunications carriers communicate with their customers during and after a major outage”, communications minister Michelle Rowland said in a statement.

Industry will also now be required to “provide work plans to the regulator following a major outage, to explain how an impacted telco will mitigate the risk of a similar outage in future”.

There will also be some changes to emergency calling management.

The November Optus outage caused some 2697 Triple Zero calls from Optus customers to fail. 

A separate Telstra outage in March this year caused some Triple Zero call transfers to fail as well. 

There have also been recent concerns that 3G network shutdowns will leave some customers unable to make Triple Zero calls.

“Over the next 12-18 months, the government will establish the Triple Zero Custodian framework, initially led by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO), to improve industry accountability and end-to-end oversight of Triple Zero,” the government said today.

The government will also “create a new comprehensive testing regime across telecommunications networks and telecommunications devices for calls to Triple Zero; and “review and update of legislation and regulation relating to the delivery of Triple Zero.”

TIO Cynthia Gebert said her organisation "will work with all parties to deliver a robust Triple Zero function, enhanced telco standards and rules in line with community expectations, improved communication during a crisis, and a fairer system for consumers to seek compensation during times of mass disruption.” 

Rowland said the review “is the most comprehensive examination of the Triple Zero ecosystem in over a decade.”

“It means we have a workable blueprint to implement changes that will help improve the resilience of telecommunications in this country,” she said.