Telstra put lives on hold
Minister demands answers after triple-0 failure
TWELVE emergency triple-0 calls went unanswered in Queensland yesterday after a Telstra cable was damaged in regional New South Wales.
The telco is under pressure to explain why its network failed to handle the damage – which it believes was caused by a lightning strike – without the potentially lifesaving calls being dropped.
The outage resulted in emergency calls to police, ambulance and fire brigade services across five states going unanswered.
It also caused chaos with hundreds of traffic lights in Victoria and disruption to some EFTPOS machines.
Emergency services in Queensland said the 12 unanswered calls had no adverse impact on those needing help.
However the outage resulted in a delay of five minutes for one triple-zero call to Queensland Fire and Emergency Services. “The call was for a nonlife threatening case in North Coast region,” a QFES spokesperson said. “No further delays have been reported.”
Federal Communications Minister Mitch Fifield demanded Telstra boss Andy Penn explain the outage. “I’ve asked the CEO of Telstra for further advice as to what has happened,” he said. “I’ll also be asking the secretary of my department for a report.”
Mr Penn said Telstra was “very concerned” to ensure triple-0 calls went through.
“There is redundancy and resilience built into that system but the sequence of events has had an impact on some services,” he said.
The drama began when the cable, running between Orange and Bowral, was severed. Telstra said they believed the damage was “consistent with [a] lightning strike”. However, a Bureau of Meteorology spokesman said the closest lightning strike was recorded about 200km west, near Condobolin.