Department of Comms reveals text-based triple zero pilot is close

The federal government has revealed that it is working on establishing a technical trial that could lead to the establishment of Australia’s first mass adoption text-to-triple zero relay service.

Department of Communications officials today confirmed that the government was close to securing a commercial contract for the trial with an agreement expected to be reached within the first half of the year.

Australia currently provides limited TTY and web-based text-to-emergency communication services for speech and hearing-impaired individuals through the National Relay Service.

However, if successful, the government’s trial could lead to the establishment of Australia’s first ever text-to-000 emergency relay service for mass adoption by the wider community over regular, commercial mobile networks.

“In relation to the SMS relay pilot, we are working closely with a potential provider. That was undertaken through a tender process and we are working toward a contract," a department official told the senate committee.

“We are just about to commence contract negotiations with the potential provider and then a little bit of time when they will need to upstaff to cover and have enough capability to take control."

The official was unable to provide the committee with an exact date as to when the system might become operation, however the official confirmed that the contract was expected to be in place by the end of the first half of this year.

If the pilot project succeeds, the new relay service would bring Australia’s triple zero ecosystem into line with comparable economies around the world, including the US, the United Kingdom, Canada, Singapore and France.

The deployment of a text-to-000 service is widely considered to be overdue in Australia to technical challenges providing commercially-viable voice services to its population in remote and regional areas, which are often sparsely distributed and isolated.

It’s understood that carriers have supported the idea the deploying of text-based emergency contact methods as an economically practical alternative to voice – particularly in cases when using emerging satellite-to-mobile (STM) technologies would be far less costly than building and maintaining towers and base stations.

However, in recent industry submissions to the government over its draft legislation requiring Australia’s top three carriers – Telstra, Optus and TPG Telecom – to provide universal outdoor mobile service, known as UOMO, carriers have expressed concerns about the maturity of STM innovations.

The legislation leans heavily on recent developments in telecommunications, including Low Earth Orbit satellites (LEOsats) and Direct to Device (D2D) technology, both of which could improve emergency service communications in remote areas like the Australian outback.

However, both TPG Telecom and Telstra think that the government has an overly rosy view of what STM might be able to achieve in the near term.

Telstra has urged the government to push the new laws’ default commencement date back by a year to December 2028.

It’s understood that the carrier’s concerns are not only due to concerns about the maturity of the technology.

iTnews understands that some carriers are also concerned that the commercial environment for satellite services in the southern hemisphere is also in a nascent phase with limited options for providers.

Decoded, that means that carriers are concerned that Starlink maybe the only viable provider in the market.