Communications Minister Anika Wells says a review of legislation governing the Triple Zero service is imminent. Photo: Facebook.
A comprehensive review of the nation’s Triple Zero laws and regulations has got the green light, two years after it was first formally recommended from a review into the Optus failures of 2023.
Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) deputy chair Richard Bean recommended a review in March 2024 after he investigated the 2023 outages, which left millions of Australians without Triple Zero coverage.
Responding to that recommendation a month after it was delivered, the Federal Government said it would initiate a review within six months to look at overhauling the legislation governing the emergency services network.
But nothing happened and a subsequent, more serious Optus outage occurred in September 2025, which resulted in some people who were unable to access the Triple Zero emergency service subsequently dying.
A Triple Zero Custodian was legally established in October last year to “help safeguard the continued availability of emergency calling for all Australians”, but even that was more than a year after the Bean investigation recommended it.
Addressing the Comms Day Regional Forum in Canberra on Tuesday (24 February), Federal Communications Minister Anika Wells announced an actual review of the law was finally about to get underway.
“I am announcing we will imminently commence this critical piece of work,” the Minister said.
“A comprehensive review of Triple Zero legislation and regulations is a key step in rebuilding public confidence in the system and ensuring we have the right framework to reduce the risk of a major outage happening again.
“The review will draw on lessons from the 2023 and 2025 Optus outages, the 3G switchover, and recently identified device issues.
“I will have more to say on the review scope and structure in due course, but let me make it very clear – this is of the utmost importance to me, the government and, most importantly, the Australian people.
“We must do everything in our power to ensure triple zero remains reliable, resilient, and fit for purpose – now and into the future.”
Ms Wells described the 2025 network collapse as a “lightning rod” for the millions of Australians who put their trust in the Triple Zero service.
“But that trust is fragile,” she said.
“It must be earned and maintained, and right now it must be rebuilt.”
Last year’s outage will be the subject of a third hearing this week of a Senate inquiry into Optus’s failure to connect people with emergency services.
Executives from Optus and its parent company, Singtel, will appear before the committee, as will those from Apple, Google, the National Emergency Management Agency, and the NSW Ambulance Service.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who chairs the committee, welcomed the announcement of an imminent review.
“The Triple Zero system is clearly broken, not fit for modern Australia and needs an urgent overhaul,” Senator Hanson-Young said.
“Throughout the many Triple Zero sagas, there have been two common threads: big telcos who are putting profits ahead of people’s safety and a regulator who is asleep at the wheel.
“The relationship between the corporations and the regulator ACMA is far too cosy.
“Australians are being let down by a regulator that is more of a lapdog than a watchdog, and a handful of big corporations who know they can get away with poor service and self-regulation.
“This review must look deeply into the role of ACMA and the safety and accountability problems with essential services being delivered by big telcos that are largely self-regulated.”
The reasons behind the inability of thousands of mobile phone handsets to access Triple Zero following the shutdown of 3G networks in 2024 are currently the subject of several investigations.
On 18 September 2025, emergency calls were blocked through Optus in South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and parts of NSW.
The deaths of two people in South Australia and one in WA have been linked to those outages. A fourth death, of an infant in SA, is considered likely to have been unrelated.
A separate outage on 28 September blocked more calls to triple zero through an Optus tower in Dapto, in the NSW Illawarra region.
The Opposition and Greens severely criticised Ms Wells’ handling of the initial outage in September last year, saying she was too slow to act or to even hold her first face-to-face meeting with Optus executives.
In the immediate wake of the outages, Ms Wells flew to New York to showcase Australia’s world-first social media ban to the United Nations.
It was a move that was highly criticised once it became apparent where the Minister was.
“When families didn’t even know if they could get emergency services connected, she was jetting off to New York,” the then Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said at the time.
Ms Wells was also ridiculed for drawing attention to her inexperience in the portfolio by describing herself as a “new minister to the industry”.
