A problem with old Samsung phones failing to connect to Vodafone towers in an emergency has seen tragedy with a death.
It’s been a less than fantastic time for two of Australia’s telcos with regards to emergency calls on their network.
Back in September, Optus saw fatalities on its network when an upgrade failure made it impossible for people in certain regions to connect to the emergency network. That’s a disaster, especially given that emergency calls are an aspect of mobile connectivity that’s supposed to be sacred.
Sadly, the breakdowns have continued.
Just last month, Telstra found a problem with older Samsung phones failing to connect to Vodafone and TPG towers in an emergency, noting the problem with a warning for several devices that wouldn’t be updated, with plenty more needing an update ASAP to avoid these problems.
The issue is bigger than simply being a Telstra or Vodafone customer, because in the event of an emergency, triple zero callers are shuffled to the closest tower, regardless of what it is or who they pay for service through.
In what likely stems from the 3G shutdowns last year, if that happened to be a Vodafone or TPG tower and you had one of the affected phones, you wouldn’t get through, and the emergency call would fail.
Beyond the failure of emergency calls, affected devices will soon be forced off of every network due to devices needing to work with emergency calls being a requirement for any phone currently being used.
While the removal of these phones from networks is a problem, the disaster that would be no emergency services is far worse, and potentially catastrophic for anyone affected.
Unfortunately, TPG has this week confirmed that a person has died following an emergency call that failed to connect to its towers using one of the affected Samsung devices.
According to TPG, the incident occurred on November 13 for someone using the Lebara service (which uses Vodafone’s network), with the Samsung device unable to connect during the emergency. The network wasn’t technically suffering any failures or outages at the time, but the problem with the older affected Samsung phones is a reliance on towers that are no longer operational, hence the failure.
“This is a tragic incident, and our condolences and thoughts are with the individual’s family and loved ones,” said Inaki Berroeta, Managing Director and CEO of TPG Telecom.
“Access to emergency services is critical. We urge all customers with outdated software to replace or update their devices without delay to ensure they can reach Triple Zero in an emergency,” he said.
