Australian emergency callers will be answered by a recording

Stuart Corner
Saturday, 20 December 2008 09:58

Your IT - Home IT

Callers to Australia's 000 emergency number will be answered by a recording rather than a human operator, a move which the Australian Communications and Media Authority says will reduce the number of spurious calls that 000 operators have to handle.

The short announcement, introduced on 19 December, says: "You have dialled emergency Triple Zero. Your call is being connected," after which callers will immediately be connected to an operator.

The ACMA says the announcement will give people who have accidentally dialled Triple Zero the opportunity to hang up before being connected to an operator, freeing the service up to receive genuine calls, and "should also provide some comfort to callers, confirming they have reached Triple Zero."

It adds that "Telstra, as the emergency call [organisation] for Triple Zero, has advised that handling of genuine calls can be compromised by the need to answer calls that occur through misdialling or do not relate to time-critical or life-threatening emergencies."

Acting ACMA chairman, Chris Cheah, said: "The added few seconds taken by the [announcement] is inconsequential in comparison to the total time taken to address a genuine emergency. In fact, call handling should improve because of the expected fall in non-genuine calls to the Triple Zero operator.'

The ACMA adds that, in June 2008, Telecom New Zealand introduced a similar system and it resulted in a 27 percent reduction in non-genuine calls to the emergency call number. Nevertheless, the ACMA it will monitor the impact of the change over the next three months.

It also points out that "Triple Zero was also referred to as 'Triple O'. This latter term is no longer used due to a concern that it may cause confusion for users of alphanumeric keypads who may dial 'o' rather than zero."