1400 Triple Zero calls weren't connected during Telstra's May outage

More than 1400 calls to the Triple Zero emergency call service were unable to be connected during a Telstra network outage in May, the government's formal report into the incident reveals.

After the first serious disruptions to the emergency lines since 1961, the Department of Communications has made 11 recommendations, including seven directly to Telstra, with action to improve back-ups on the network and introduce live reporting.

Fire damage at the Telstra cable pit east of Orange.

The Department of Communications announced a formal investigation into the outage the day it occurred on May 4, with assistance from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

The ACMA investigation found a total of 3912 emergency calls were made during the disruption. Of those, 1433 weren't connected due to the disruption while the remainder weren't connected because the caller voluntarily ended the call when it reached a voice announcement or terminated the call while waiting for an operator.

"Triple Zero is the lifeline for Australians in life-threatening or emergency situations. Community confidence in the emergency call service must be maintained," ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said on Monday.

The outage was first noticed at 2am by emergency services and went on for several hours. The cause of the outage was later found to be the result of a fire at a cable pit near Orange in NSW. While the fire was initially suspected to be the result of a lightning strike, this was ruled out as a possibility by the NSW Rural Fire Service. Questions were raised by industry experts about why back-ups, known as "redundancies", were not working as planned.

In the days after the incident, chief executive Andy Penn publicly apologised for the situation, however, the telco repeatedly refused to confirm how many emergency calls were missed on the morning of the outage. Typically, 25,000 calls a day are made to the Triple Zero line across the country (25 per cent are not emergencies).

All telecommunications companies were hit by the network problem on the Friday morning in May, as Telstra is contracted to provide the 000 connections for all calls, with providers frustrated by the length of time it took Telstra to alert them about the issue. Some telcos took to the phones themselves, calling back customers whose attempts to contact emergency services had failed.

It's understood rival providers raised their concerns about the response time as part of the investigation.

A second outage for Triple Zero, which Fairfax Media revealed on May 31 was the result of offshore hackers swamping the phone line, also formed part of the investigation. It's understood that Telstra has made changes to its Triple Zero service since the incidents.

Issues with failed emergency services connections in the past have resulted in large penalties, including a $400,000 fine paid by TPG Telecom in 2014 after an ACMA investigation into a complaint made by a customer who tried to call 000 in 2011 when their partner had a heart attack.

More to come

Jennifer Duke writes about media and telecommunications.

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