The federal government will put Australia’s triple-zero emergency calls service out for tender to private operators for the first time in its 55-year history.
The government has called for expressions of interest in running the dialling service, which has been the sole domain of the country’s former public telco Telstra (fully privatised in 2006).
It follows a communications department review of the “voice-only” service, which last year recommended improving ways of automatically transmitting the location coordinates of mobile callers to the operator and police, fire and ambulance services as “an immediate priority”.
But the review also urged the government to push back a tender as far as 2018 “while any coordinate-based information capability is agreed and implemented, proposed triple-zero governance and coordination arrangements are resolved, and there is greater clarity on the desired future directions of triple zero”.
A tender in 2016 “may place at risk the current successful delivery model”, it said. It also risked dragging out negotiations between state and territory governments, Telstra – which had a “firmly entrenched” advantage as the present operator – and any other telco that emerged as the successful bidder, the review found.
It also flagged the “merit” of exploring alternatives to emergency phone calls, including text messages or video calls, despite noting there were no known examples yet from overseas of text becoming a successful trigger for emergency responses.
The communications minister, Mitch Fifield, said in a statement the call for expressions of interest was “the latest step in ensuring all Australians have access to a world-class service which can keep pace with new and innovative technologies”.
It was also “an important step in ensuring triple zero remains a highly trusted and reliable service for all Australians when they need to request emergency assistance”.
“Today the majority of calls to triple zero come from mobile phones, and the rapid development of new technologies has enabled a range of new communications options,” he said.
Potential operators have separately been asked to come up with “a solution or solutions” for location coordinates from mobile and fixed line callers to either be sent to triple zero operators and emergency services, or to operators for passing on to police, fire and ambulance.
Successful applicants would then be invited to join a tender process next month.
The departmental review of triple zero, released in August 2015, found 91% of callers in the past two years were satisfied with the service.
But even more (93%) agreed the coordinates for their location should be automatically sent to triple zero.
“This is a technology that the community strongly expect to be available and which has clear potential to deliver improved outcomes by reducing response times and assisting in the cases where callers to triple zero cannot readily identify or may not be able to communicate their exact location,” the review found.
Almost three-quarters of the callers preferred voice calls as the primary contact method. About two-thirds of calls came from mobile phones.
However, more than half supported “other possible means of contact such as via SMS or video calls”, with automated alert devices and smartphone applications holding the most appeal.
The review noted “circumstances where using text-based communications can have advantages over voice”.
Putting new contact methods in place would require overcoming “key technical impediments” and funding commitments from “all emergency services organisations”, as well as state and territory consensus on managing “risks and implementation timeframes”, it said.
The national operator of triple zero is required to answer 85% of calls within five seconds and 95% within 10 seconds.
Its busiest 24-hour period in the past five years was during the January 2013 floods across south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales, when it took 30,028 calls.
