Second death linked to phone flaw revealed as Minister snubs triple-0 inquiry
Communications Minister Anika Wells has refused to appear before a Senate inquiry that has uncovered a second death linked to faulty ‘death phones’ that fail to connect to emergency services.
A second fatality linked to so-called ‘death phones’ has escalated Australia’s triple-0 crisis according to an explosive inquiry which heard accusations of a telco cover-up.
Testimony by TPG Telecom’s chief executive led to the inquiry’s chair, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, claiming Telstra tried to “cover-up” a triple-0 related death at Wentworth Falls, NSW where a technical oversight in older handsets is thought to have prevented an emergency call.
Communications Minister Anika Wells snubbed the Senate inquiry into the failure. Ms Wells – who has billed taxpayers to take her husband to three consecutive AFL grand finals and almost $100,000 to fly to New York after Optus’s fatal triple-0 outage in September – declined a formal request to appear.
Tens of thousands of Australians are unknowingly carrying outdated mobile phones that could fail to connect to emergency services when their primary network is unavailable. Many of these phones need an urgent software upgrade or must be replaced.
Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson said while Ms Wells – who is a member of the House Representatives, is not obliged to give evidence before the inquiry – her refusal was disappointing.
“There is precedent where other members of the House of Representatives have appeared and agreed to appear before Senate hearings. So I just want to note my disappointment that the minister has made that determination,” Senator Henderson said.
TPG Telecom chief executive Inaki Berroeta revealed that a second person may have died after they failed to connect to emergency services using an older Samsung phone.
Mr Berroeta appeared before the inquiry on Tuesday, which also heard evidence from Telstra CEO Vicki Brady and Samsung.
Mr Berroeta told the inquiry that he only learned about the possible death on Monday from Telstra, which operates the triple-0 platform.
“We were told that the call might have been made in connection to someone that has passed away. We have sought to clarify the circumstances, but the relevant agency has not verified this,” he said.
Mr Berroeta said TPG has sought further clarification from NSW Ambulance.
“We just found out yesterday. One Telstra staff mentioned to one of our staff that there might be a person that passed away related to this incident, but that is something that we have asked NSW ambulance, and they cannot verify,” he said.
Opposition communications spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh said the new revelation was “sickening” and that it bolstered the case for an independent whole-of-system inquiry.
“Today, TPG has said a customer died in September, and they only found out yesterday through Telstra,” she said.
“This is extremely sad news, and every Australian has the right to be very angry with the government’s lack of care. The Minister left the country during the Optus triple-0 crisis to go to New York.”
Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, the inquiry’s chair, accused Telstra of engaging in a cover-up over its failure inform TPG that a customer possibly died after their phone failed to connect to triple-0.
“I am absolutely flabbergasted that despite … the huge public concern we have about this issue – this is a very serious Senate inquiry that’s been underway, there is another inquiry being run into triple-0 and Optus – and not at one point in this did anyone within the industry want to fess up and say there’d been another death six days later,” Ms Hanson-Young said.
“It’s a cover up.”
Ms Brady said the telco notified the Communications Department.
“We understood that the ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) and NSW Ambulance, were investigating. So it’s not,
I think, our responsibility, and given respect to the family involved, not for us to share that publicly,” Ms Brady said.
“We knew that NSW ambulance was engaging with TPG. We knew that TPG’s technical teams were engaging with our technical teams, so they were aware that a device was unable to make a triple-0 call. That obviously is a matter for TPG to then investigate and understand what happened in that particular circumstance.”
The core vulnerability, a deadly technical oversight, affects numerous older handsets whose software fails to correctly switch to an alternate mobile network when the user’s primary service is out of range or suffering an outage. This crucial feature is designed to ensure all emergency calls connect, regardless of the user’s subscription.
Samsung Australia head of mobile Eric Chou said the flaw had affected 71 older phone models, 61 of which could be fixed with a software upgrade, while the remaining 10 would need to be replaced with newer handsets.
He said Samsung provided TPG with the model numbers of the affected phones in 2021, and reiterated what model were affected to all telcos in late 2023 ahead of the 3G shutdown.
Senator Hanson-Young questioned Communications Department first assistant secretary Sam Grunhard over the phone failures and when the department first learned about the second death linked to the older Samsung devices.
Mr Grunhard said Telstra told the department about the failed call on September 24. “At that stage, it was very unclear whether it was a network problem within TPG, a mobile coverage problem, a device problem and so on. It just wasn’t clear initially, and TPG and Telstra both confirmed with me that they were looking closely into the incident,” Mr Grunhard said.
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Originally published as Second death linked to phone flaw revealed as Minister snubs triple-0 inquiry
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