CEOs of Optus, TPG and Telstra meet with Communications Minister in Canberra

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Telecommunications companies will stress test the emergency call network ahead of the peak disaster season to ensure triple zero calls can still be made during system outages. Communications Minister Anika Wells says the government will continue to work with mobile carriers to improve reliability of the system.

Transcript

00:00There are a number of agreed steps going forward basically. The first among them and main one

00:09is that the telecommunications providers have agreed to run a series of stress tests in

00:17coming weeks to put their networks under pressure to see if they are in fact reliable providers

00:25of the triple zero service. This is something that the minister was asked about during question

00:32time this afternoon in Parliament House and she said that that process, that test will

00:38happen before the peak of the disaster season. As for further progress in other areas, they

00:46have agreed to continue to meet and work with each other. During this Canberra Parliament

00:53House meeting where the CEOs of the three telecommunications companies were hauled before the minister under

01:01a series of questions, they were asked to provide detail on what steps they have undertaken to

01:07ensure that callers using their networks can access triple zero when and if they need to

01:14do so. So a continuation in terms of what we've been hearing from the government as well, saying

01:20that they are urging these providers to do all they can to ensure the networks are reliable.

01:26And so the minister came under pressure in Parliament today. Take us through what happened there.

01:31That was and this was not unexpected. We did see some previewing or hints that this would be the case.

01:37The opposition leading the way here with a series of questions, some also from the crossbench,

01:43but the opposition seeking to put some of the blame on the minister as well, not allowing her to

01:51completely lay blame solely at the foot of Optus. Now, they said that she needed to answer a series

02:00of questions about when she first became aware of the outage and the steps that followed from there.

02:05Also, she was questioned over whether she had contacted the family members of the multiple

02:13deaths that were related, multiple people who died in the first of the recent outages related to Optus.

02:21She said she had not and that that was something for Optus to do. Then she was questioned again,

02:27further into question time, over why it has taken so long to implement reforms. Some of these reforms put

02:34forward 18 months ago in response to a or as part of a review in to the initial outage of Optus

02:43triple triple zero calls that happened some years ago. 13 of those recommendations have been

02:49implemented after 18 months. There's still five that need to be. And here is the minister talking

02:55about that. In each of those four recommendations, they are either being led or depend on industry.

03:01So at my meeting with the chief executives of the three telcos who I summons to Canberra earlier today,

03:08ahead of introducing the triple zero custodian legislation, I urged industry to go faster on those remaining

03:15four recommendations that they have carriage of. And I'm pleased to update the house, Mr Speaker, that they agreed to do so.

03:22You can hear there some of the flavour of question time with interjections throughout that response

03:29from the minister, her committing to continue to push for the providers to take steps swiftly to resolve

03:37issues over concerns about the reliability of the network as we get ever closer to the peak disaster season.

03:44Jo.

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