000 (emergency telephone number)

Before 1969, Australia did not have a national telephone number for emergency services; the police, fire and ambulance services had many telephone numbers, one for each local unit. In 1961, the Postmaster-General's Department started introducing the 000 telephone number in major population centres, and during the 1960s, extended its coverage nationwide. The number 000 was chosen for several reasons. Technically, it suited the dialling system for the most remote automatic exchanges, particularly those in outback Queensland. These communities used the digit 0 to select an automatic trunk line to a centre. In the most remote communities, two 0s had to be used to reach a main centre, so dialling 0+0 plus another 0 would call (at least) an operator. Zero is also the closest to the finger stall on rotary dial phones making it easy to dial in the dark or an environment with smoke. Today, the Triple Zero service is operated and maintained by Telstra, formerly known as Telecom Australia, which replaced the Postmaster-General's Department and was Australia's national telecommunications company prior to privatisation in the 1990's. ==Calling 000==

000 is a free call. If the phone cannot connect to the caller's subscribed network, the phone will attempt to roam and camp-on another carrier's network to carry the call. By law, mobile networks are required to take emergency calls from customers of competing networks through the national camp-on mechanism. For mobile and satellite phones, a SIM card is not required to connect a Triple Zero call via any network. Interpreter services for different languages are available, and non-English speakers are automatically connected to the police in their state or territory. The 2G and 3G mobile networks have been discontinued in Australia and telecommunications providers in Australia are legally prohibited from providing services to phones that cannot access the Triple Zero system. Therefore, to make a call to the Triple Zero network or use any other telecommunications service, the device must be capable of at least 4G or VoLTE for calling. Answering Calling 000 begins by connecting to one of several public safety answering points operated by Telstra, called a Emergency Service Access Points, starting with a recorded message stating "You have dialled emergency Triple Zero, your call is being connected". The Telstra operator will ask the caller whether they require police, fire, or ambulance service, and their state or territory. When calling from a landline or public telephone, the location is automatically determined. The call is then transferred to the emergency service operator requested by the caller. As soon as the emergency service call taker answers the call, any available caller location information, ascertained by automatically accessing a special database from the calling line identification (CLI) data that is provided with all emergency calls, is transferred to the emergency service. However, the emergency service call taker will still question the caller again to verify the caller's location in order to dispatch the correct response. The caller's address is usually available to Telstra operators for fixed services in Australia even if the number is "private". However, emergency service organisation call takers will always ask for the address of the emergency to be stated whenever possible to ensure an accurate location is provided Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Norfolk Island have their own Triple Zero infrastructure and calls from these external territories are not handled through Telstra or the mainland Triple Zero infrastructure. Calls passed to Triple Zero Victoria will be answered by the first available trained call taker, who will collect information from the caller and enter this into the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system. Using this information, a dispatcher will identify and dispatch the appropriate emergency services or resources. Emergency crews are often notified by the relevant services' dispatchers while the call taker is still obtaining further information or giving advice, such as guiding the caller through cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), obtaining details of a possible offender, or receiving further details about the exact location or situation - an initial response may be made to details as vague as a town or suburb, while the call taker continues to get more specific location information. Triple Zero Victoria is also responsible for Victorian State Emergency Service call-taking and dispatch, although this service cannot be contacted by dialling 000 as SES calls are not considered to be life-threatening. The number for SES calls is 132 500, but police or another service dialled inappropriately will notify SES. Many Triple Zero Victoria practices and protocols are standardised across all emergency services agencies, as all agencies use the same computer network. The result is complete and instantaneous information sharing between emergency services. Emergency+ The Emergency+ app helps Triple Zero callers to identify their exact location by using their mobile phone's GPS and location services. ==Issues==

2003 overload in Melbourne On 3 December 2003, floods and storms in Melbourne, Victoria, caused "an extremely high number of calls to the 000 emergency call service", which prevented some calls from being answered immediately. This delay was compounded by a software upgrade on the emergency call handling system used by the Victorian emergency service organisations (ESOs), meaning that Telstra (the national 000 call operator) encountered severe delays in handing over emergency calls to the relevant ESO. This caused some users interviewed by authorities to believe that they may have accidentally dialled the wrong number. A subsequent investigation recommended that a temporary recorded announcement be implemented during extreme events to assure callers that their calls were being connected and a delay may occur. This is not to be confused with the standard "You have dialled Emergency Triple Zero, your call is being connected" recorded voice announcement (RVA), which was introduced in 2008. 2009 Victorian bushfires On 7 February 2009, catastrophic bushfires occurred in Victoria, otherwise known as Black Saturday bushfires. Over 18,000 calls to the Triple Zero Emergency Service on that day were left unanswered, and the majority of calls took much longer to be answered than usual. Owing to the unprecedented numbers of calls coming through, Telstra decided to isolate all Victorian emergency calls which were answered by the Melbourne emergency call centre, with all the remaining calls answered by the Sydney emergency call centre. Telstra also activated the generic extreme event recorded voice announcement "You have dialled Emergency Triple Zero. If you require police, fire or ambulance, please stay on the line. If you require your local State Emergency Service please hang up and dial 1223 – that's 1223 – as this service cannot be connected through Triple Zero", which temporarily replaced their front-end announcement. While Telstra records show 95 emergency call centre employees rostered during the 24 hours on 7 February 2009, call pick up delays were evident due to lengthy delays at the SECC level, being ESTA. Telstra agents were left tied up on phone calls with callers, waiting for emergency services to answer, thus calls in the 000 queue were unable to be answered. Callers in a queue waiting for a Telstra agent to answer the phone were played an RVA every 30 seconds in the following terms, "You have dialled the Emergency Triple Zero number. Due to an unprecedented high volume of calls being received by Triple Zero, we are experiencing short delays in answering. Please stay on the line and you will be answered by the next available operator". This reassures callers that an extreme emergency was occurring, and their call would be answered. Remote locations One major obstacle in earlier 2009 is that operators of Triple Zero could not use global positioning system (GPS) data within GSM or CDMA telephone systems to accurately locate distressed or injured persons using mobile phones visibly away from roads. Instead, emergency operators must ask the caller exactly where they are. The answer to this may need to correspond to an existing road name (which may be practically impossible for distressed person(s) some kilometres away from a road), until the emergency service organisation operator can dispatch an emergency service vehicle. In 2013, an emergency service smartphone app was produced and developed by Fire and Rescue NSW and the Triple Zero Awareness Working Group. Australians in remote locations are encouraged to use this app to contact emergency services, as it uses phones GPS data to display the caller's location on the screen. This allows the caller to read their location aloud to the operator, so they can be found by emergency services when they are far from roads. In 2017–2018, ACMA stated in their annual report that both Industry and Government had begun to make considerable investment to communications infrastructure. This includes a privacy report for implementing the Advanced Mobile Location (AML) standard for Triple Zero calls. The system will automatically provide location data (including GPS, Wi-Fi positioning system, and mobile phone tracking) from the caller's device, to the Triple Zero operator automatically. These new arrangements were due to be implemented and operating by May 2020. Incidents with Emergency Service Access Point operators A case of 000 operator failure was reported in The Daily Telegraph in 2011. Joanne Wicking had called for police assistance, but the 000 operator chose to believe her killer, who had assured the operator everything was fine, despite repeated calls by Joanne. In another incident six months later, when 000 staff were insistent about needing a street address for a remote country farm, the man needing help died. Telecommunications provider incidents In April 2014, telecommunications company TPG was fined 400,000 for withholding access to emergency numbers where customers had failed to pay their bills. Federal Court Justice Mordecai Bromberg found that TPG failed to provide access on over 190 occasions between March and September 2011, and the company did not ensure that almost 6000 lines had emergency access. During the November 2023 Optus outage, major telecommunications operator Optus failed to ensure that Triple Zero calls made by their customers were able to camp on to another mobile or landline network. As a result, more than 2,100 calls to the Triple Zero system failed during the 12 hour outage and at least 300 people did not receive a welfare check when the issue was identified. Following parliamentary and government enquiries, Optus was fined more than  million for failing to convey or transfer emergency calls and new national standards about communication during outages with customers were made. For 90 minutes on the morning of 1 March 2024, Telstra suffered technical issues at one of its Emergency Service Access Points, resulting in calls not being able to be transferred to several emergency service organisations across Australia. Of the 500 Triple Zero calls during that period, 148 calls were not able to be transferred. In some states and territories, Telstra operators had to email emergency services with call details, some of which weren't received until 2 hours after the outage ended. A Victorian man died from a cardiac arrest during this period, where his emergency call was not able to be transferred to a Triple Zero Victoria emergency call-taker and the dispatch of an ambulance was significantly delayed. Federal and state governments have initiated investigations, although they have acknowledged that there was little that could have been done by Telstra call-takers who are not trained to provide medical advice or can dispatch resources. On 18 September 2025, Optus experienced another outage to its network, exclusively effecting Triple Zero calls from the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia. At least 600 calls over 15 hours were not connected to Triple Zero by Optus, and at least three people who attempted to call Triple Zero were found to have died. Welfare checks by the company and state and territory police are ongoing, and multiple investigations have been announced by regulators and Optus. ==See also==