Australia’s federal government has issued a statement reminding key telco provider Telstra of its baseline responsibilities to ensure that customers can still contact emergency services amid the ongoing network outage.
As per a statement from the office of acting Communications and Transport Minister Kristy McBain: “The Australian government has been advised by Telstra that there is an outage affecting a large number of mobile calls and connections. Like all telcos, Telstra must notify customers and emergency services of any major outage.
“Australian phones are also required to fall back to other networks for 000 access.”
The Australian government said in the same statement that it was aware of the rail outages impacting Victorians, with services grinding to a halt for regional train operator V/Line.
The statement added: “We understand Telstra is working on resolving the issue, and arrangements are being made for affected rail passengers.”