Senate Inquiry Calls for Telecommunications Reform

By Jessica Dempster

The National Farmers’ Federation has welcomed a Senate inquiry report into Triple Zero failures, saying it highlights the need for urgent telecommunications reform.

NFF President Hamish McIntyre says farmers have long known Australia’s mobile networks need to change, with the report recommending stronger reliability standards and improved regional coverage.

The inquiry followed a series of major outages, including an Optus outage last September which affected hundreds of Triple Zero calls and was linked to two deaths.

The committee has recommended mandatory domestic mobile roaming, minimum performance standards, automatic compensation for outage-affected customers and the ability to text Triple Zero in an emergency.

Mr McIntyre says the recommendations should be incorporated into legislation currently before the Senate.

He says enforceable reliability standards and domestic roaming would make a significant difference to people living outside major cities.