The National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) has welcomed the release of a Senate committee’s report following a year-long inquiry into Triple Zero failures, which exposes major flaws in Australia’s mobile network regulatory framework and underlines the need for urgent action to strengthen regulation of the essential service.
NFF President Hamish McIntyre said the report shows what farmers have long known – Australia’s mobile networks need to change.
“We’re backing every recommendation from the committee. We need to see them implemented immediately,” Mr McIntyre said.
The Senate Environment and Communications References Committee inquiry into Triple Zero service outages started after an Optus outage in September 2025 that impacted hundreds of Triple Zero calls and was linked to two deaths.
In June, Vodafone suffered a nationwide outage that affected hundreds of customers and impacted Triple Zero access. The next month, more than 600 Triple Zero calls failed during a major Telstra outage, and on 11 September, Optus suffered another outage that also affected Triple Zero calls.
The report makes sweeping recommendations including mandating domestic mobile roaming, introducing minimum performance and reliability standards, delivering automatic compensation for people impacted by outages, providing the ability to text Triple Zero in an emergency, and modernising legislation including the Telecommunications Act 1997.
Today’s report comes as the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation) Bill 2025 [UOMO bill] is in the Senate.
Mr McIntyre said it was a timely opportunity for the committee’s recommendations to be implemented through amendments.
“The NFF has been calling for straightforward amendments to the UOMO bill to deliver real change for people on the ground,” Mr McIntyre said.
“Enforceable reliability standards and domestic mobile roaming would make a life-changing difference to people living outside the cities.”