The triple zero questions that won't go away

Mobile providers are loathed to throw customers off their networks let alone make try to make a virtue of doing it in the press. So, last week when Australia’s two main carriers did just that, it came across as a 'break glass in case of emergency' moment (pun not intended).

Synchronously, Telstra and Optus launched publicity campaigns in bids to prompt customers using around 71 ageing, Samsung mobile handset models with triple zero calling problems to update their software, replace them or risk being kicked to the RF curb.

Customers using the handsets have been given about a month to take action – after that, they said devices would be blocked from their networks.

Telstra said it was taking the unusually aggressive step because the handsets were unable to fall back to TPG Vodafone’s network services to make triple zero calls “correctly” when its own network became unavailable. Optus more or less said the same thing.

Arriving in the aftermath of Australia’s latest emergency calling imbroglio, Optus’s Triple Zero call outage (Telstra has also had its share in recent years), their campaigns landed less like a pebble in the pond of public discourse and more like an anvil in a bowl of soup, and few if any stakeholders have escaped a dry-cleaning bill.

Optus’s triple zero outage, due to its botched firewall upgrade, was linked to at least three deaths, so public interest in the story – reflected in near universal coverage across media outlets – was understandable.

The three mobile carriers are fierce commercial rivals, but when it comes to dealing with the political fallout from these sorts of failures – and the regulatory responses that inevitably follow – they’ve traditionally been exemplars of solidarity.

Initially at least, it was no different in the case of the Samsung mobile handsets.

All three carriers were at pains to sheet responsibility for the issue back to their respective mobile networks and didn’t stray from script. Instead, standing shoulder to shoulder, they pinned the blame on the handsets. And they were careful not to leave their advanced age the devices' in technology years – about seven to eight being the most common figure – out of their messaging.

Perhaps they thought that this would defray any truly difficult questions. After all, if they simply blamed these tired old devices, they could protect their networks and avoid further acrimony between themselves. Instead, the public would simply assume that it was a matter of not being able to teach old tech new networks: silicon senility; plus ca meme, plus ca change; nothing much to see.

That is until Telstra spoke to iTnews.

There was a small but pivotal additional technical detail in Telstra’s response to our questions that hitherto had been left out of the conversation. It made everything else we’d read and heard from many quarters start to fall into place because it highlighted the uncomfortable bit that had been omitted:

“Our investigation found that the firmware of these devices was specifically configured to rely on Vodafone’s 3G network to call Triple Zero.

“This prevents Telstra and Optus customers from calling Triple Zero using the Vodafone network in cases where the Telstra and Optus networks are unavailable. Why this was configured this way is a question for Samsung and Vodafone,” a Telstra spokesperson told iTnews.

 “Specifically configured” the firmware. Let’s break that down into its parts:

As any primary school English teacher would tell you, ‘configured’ is a doing word; a verb.

‘Specifically’ is an adverb that suggests that whatever was doing that doing word, ‘configure’, did it very purposefully. It wasn’t no accident: by incompetence or design someone coded the handsets only to use a certain 3G network, possible by specifying the use of a particular mobile spectrum band.

As we wrote at the time, Telstra was now squarely blaming either Samsung or Vodafone or both for the problem:

“Why this was configured this way is a question for Samsung and Vodafone,” Telstra told us.

iTnews put the question to Samsung after receiving Telstra’s statement. We’ve yet to receive a response from them and, frankly, we’re not holding our breath for one.

Still, there’s an outstanding question that, whilst ever it remains unanswered, will not let Optus and Telstra off-the-hook completely. And it might be the question that all three carriers don’t want asked most of all.

They’ve all made public statements to the effect that they were aware of the problem with the Samsung handsets. After all, they’ve consistently said that they conduct mobile device tests regularly.

They also said that they’d been warning customers about the dangers of relying on the Samsung units for triple zero calls for at least a year in the lead up to the 3G network shutdown before they finally took the extra step of committing to blocking them altogether. 

Optus said that they sent more than 10 million alerts to customers in one form or another and participated in a sector-wide, six-week ad campaign about the coming problem. It even offered handsets to 20,000 vulnerable consumers for nix.

Vodafone TPG told iTnews that it had also used its electronic customer communication channels to issue warnings about the problem. It used a series of "escalating communications" involving text messages and emails - even making customers listen to a recorded voice messages that activated if they called from a device at particularly high risk.

That being the case, then the question being asked by some politicos, ‘why has it taken so long to get around to testing the handsets?’, is the wrong one.

Surely, the right question is ‘why have the carriers waited until now to block the handsets?’

The day before the Optus and Telstra revealed their blocking plan, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) announced tighter triple zero testing rules for mobile phones.

The new rules, it said, were in response to the third recommendation (of 18) to emerge from the federal government review of the Optus November 2023 network outage.

The review, led by former ACMA deputy chair, Richard Bean, recommended carriers test mobile handsets on a six-month cycle and that any “identified deficiencies (with handsets) must be reported to the ACMA and be accompanied by a remediation plan with timetable”.

Knowing the potential danger, surely the telcos weren’t waiting for the regulator to force their hands. So, what could the holdup have been?

Cynics might say that the carriers were in a hurry to free up valuable 850MHz, 900MHz and 2100MHz spectrum and didn’t want to do anything to cause a stir that might force them to keep their 3G networks open (and they may yet be proven right).

(It also doesn’t hurt to keep those SIO [services in operation] numbers plump and healthy come reporting season, either).

But, then again, would the likes of Australian Consumer Communications Action Network, the ACMA and the louder voices in the political class be any happier if they had moved earlier?

Take the case of those on low incomes, or pensioners or those relying on some other form of government support for their continued existence.

Centrelink’s current operating assumption is that the vast majority of its benefactors have, if not their own mobile phone, then at the very least, access to one. It relies on them for multi-factor authentication and direct customer communications – it’s hard to order a landline if you’re forced to live in shared accommodation or a tent.

Given that the problem impacts older Samsung handsets – and, according to Vodafone, some cheaper grey market handsets – then it would have been fair for carriers to place a bet that, if they blocked the handsets, the harm to vulnerable consumers would be disproportionately high.

What sort of backlash would they have been facing if vulnerable members of the community suddenly found themselves without the meagre income needed to eat or put a roof over their heads because their phones had been blocked?

Is it possible then, that operating within a polity living the shadow of the Robodebt scandal, the carriers did need to wait for specific regulations to defray any negative publicity from blocking while covering themselves legally? – to wit ‘It wasn’t our decision. Talk to ACMA.’

Whatever the case, it’s fair to say that this less-than-ideal compromise could have lingered on indefinitely had Optus, mid-last September, not bungled its network upgrade. And, of course, if, in the midst of it, three vulnerable and desperate humans had not attempted to dial for help and found their mobile services tragically wanting.

Sadly, it has taken their deaths to highlight once again the pertinence of a popular saying sometimes attributed to Maya Angelou:

“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and be unsurprised by anything in between”.

Touch wood, carriers, regulators and consumer advocates have now seen what the worst looks like, because the public and Canberra will have no forgiveness left if they haven’t.

The only question left is whether they can all get their heads together and be prepared if another triple-zero black swan event rolls around. If it happens any time soon and they start claiming to take their customer service seriously or that it was “unforeseen”, nobody will be listening.