Heh. In Australia, everyone must have access to standard phone services and at the same price everywhere. If a telco dropped their copper infrastructure, it must be for a replacement that is just as reliable and costs nothing to the consumer. The idea is that everyone has a right to telco services with the ability to always be able to contact emergency services.

Recently a telco had all their services go down. Immediately the fed started investigating. The latest ongoing is the telco had to disclose to them that ~2500 emergency call attempts failed…

The new information will be considered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority as part of its independent investigation into Optus’ compliance with rules on emergency calls.

The rules cover obligations such as conducting welfare checks on people making unsuccessful emergency calls during an outage and providing access to emergency call services.

Compensation for impacted customers and ensuring confidence in the triple zero system will also be explored in the federal probe.

The Australian Consumer Watchdog would not allow AT&T to do what they’re doing unless they pay for it all and prove that the new tech will be faultless.

The downside is Australia is huge and population low, so new infrastructure costs a lot per capita.