Another year, another telecommunications failure. In 2025, it was Optus whose network failed, leading to hundreds of triple zero calls failing to get through. This time, it was Telstra, with similarly chaotic results. As I pointed out last time around, outcomes like this are the inevitable result of a policy framework designed to put more priority on competition than on the reliable delivery of essential services.
The failures go right back to the policy reforms of the 1990s, still viewed through rose-coloured glasses by much of the commentariat. At the start of the process, Australia had a single telephone network run by a statutory corporation (Telecom Australia) which had delivered steady reductions in cost and expansion in services over many decades. The looming challenge was the new technology of broadband fibre and cellular mobile telephony.
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We could have maintained that structure and built a single high-quality network for each of these technologies. The cost savings would have been more than enough to extend coverage everywhere and provide enough resilience that no single failure could stop the system function. Competition, so much in vogue at the time, could have been provided through a common carrier model like that eventually adopted for the NBN, after a privatised Telstra failed to build broadband.
In the end, we got long-delayed and patchy networks without the benefit of competition. Telstra and Optus, the supposedly temporary duopoly established in the 1990s, still have 70% of the mobile network between them, barely changed since the turn of the century. The shift to an NBN common carrier model for broadband has produced a bit more competition but still with the duopolists having an outsized share.
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Perhaps one day we will return to full public ownership of infrastructure networks, as is happening in Italy and proposed in the UK. But for the moment, we need to consider more limited steps.
The Albanese government has responded to the failure of telecommunications policies with a universal outdoor mobile obligation aimed to ensure access to basic outdoor mobile coverage (SMS and voice services) across Australia. And there have been repeated attempts to fix the problem of a triple zero system relying on for-profit corporations. There is also the grant-based black spot program, a patchwork where a plan is needed.
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All of this remains within the discredited neoliberal framework of infrastructure competition. That’s fine for major cities, where there is usually a choice of three physical networks. Outside the big cities, even on major highways, the situation is far less satisfactory. We need not just a community service obligation but a national plan to expand coverage. Crucially, this must allow automatic roaming between networks, so that customers of one corporation can use an alternative where their own provider is inadequate.
A more radical solution is needed for fragile emergency services. Rather than trying to cajole the telcos into working together, we need a national essential services network (ESN) with access to all carriers and a primary focus on resilience. Essential devices would use credentials allowing automatic connection to any available mobile network. This should cover voice, SMS and some priority data. Rather than contracting with individual carriers, services such as triple zero, emergency warnings, police and hospitals would work through the ESN. Other countries such as Finland are following this route.
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The world is gradually recovering from the mania for privatisation and pseudo-competitive markets that dominated the neoliberal area. But we need a more coherent response than “fix on failure”. It’s time to accept that essential infrastructure is too important to be left to private monopolies and duopolies, regulated or otherwise.
