They are just two recommendations of a review led by former deputy chair of the Australian Communications and Media Authority Richard Bean into last November’s Optus systems failure that impacted 10 million customers.
The triple-zero line is meant to be available for Australians at all times, but during the outage nearly 2700 people were left unable to connect.
The final version of the Bean report, released today, urges a major shake-up in what telecommunication companies are required to tell emergency services and authorities if a similar outage occurs again.
It wants telcos to set up a “triple zero custodian” tasked with the sole job of ensuring the service works.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the federal government would be implementing all 18 recommendations.
“Australians need to have confidence in our telecommunications services, particularly when it comes to triple zero,” she said.
“Last year’s Optus outage and the Telstra triple-zero fault earlier this year highlights vulnerabilities in the system.”
Another recommendation in the Bean report is to force telcos to share real-time network information during outages.
Optus acting chief executive officer Michael Venter said the company had implemented changes to ensure the outage never happened again.
“This includes, reconfiguring our routers to handle significant changes in IP routing addresses and enhancing our processes to allow us to restore our network faster remotely.
“We are also reviewing the way triple-zero call failures are captured and processed in our network.”
Venter said Optus invested nearly $1 billion every year on its network initiatives, maintenance and upgrades.
