I recently had the privilege of participating in the National Emergency Communications Working Group (NECWG) 2026 industry engagement forum, joining a cross-sector panel alongside representatives from emergency services, public safety agencies, regulators, and industry across Australia and New Zealand.
The focus was clear: how we improve, and future-proof, one of the nation’s most critical services - Triple Zero (000).
What stood out immediately was the calibre of people in the room. Behind the systems, policies and technology are individuals working under immense pressure, supporting others at their most vulnerable. Their professionalism, empathy and resilience are extraordinary and essential to the trust Australians place in emergency services every day.
That context matters, because the challenges and opportunities ahead are not just technical, they are deeply human.
From the discussions, three key takeaways stood out.
1. Voice still matters - but it must evolve
Triple Zero has been the “front door” to emergency assistance in Australia since 1961 - predating the moon landing. While the underlying technologies have evolved significantly, the fundamental interface has not. We still rely on voice, and there is something hugely valuable about that.
In moments of crisis, human interaction matters. A calm, reassuring voice can provide clarity, guidance and emotional support when it’s needed most. The ability of a trained operator to triage, classify, prioritise and direct assistance in real time provides something that technology cannot yet fully replicate.
But staying the same is not the same as staying effective.
Voice-first models, while powerful, are not universally accessible - and that brings us to the next challenge.
2. Equity and access: our biggest blind spot
Voice does not serve everyone equally - and today, our emergency infrastructure doesn’t either.
True equity means recognising that people have different needs, capabilities and starting points - and designing services that account for those differences.
For many people with disabilities, a voice-centric system creates barriers at multiple stages:
Raising the call
Navigating the triage process
Communicating effectively without their normal preferred primary means
Services like the National Relay Service (NRS) attempt to bridge this gap, but in high-pressure emergency scenarios, they don’t always provide the mechanism people need.
Then there’s geography. Australia’s scale introduces a profound challenge. Using the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia Plus (ARIA+) adopted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), we can objectively understand how dispersed our population is. It shows more than half-a-million Australians are classified as living in remote or very remote areas - and when we include Outer Regional Australia, that number climbs to over 3 million people.
That’s a significant portion of the population - millions of Australians who may not be consistently well served by current emergency access mechanisms because of geography.
Location intelligence can help reinforce our connectivity gap reality: the majority of the Australian landmass is classified as remote. ARIA+ viewed geospatially on a map such as that posted on Brilliant Maps shows distance is not just an inconvenience - it’s a real barrier.
Figure 1 - Brilliant Maps rendering of ARIA+ data, Source: Brilliant Maps, 10 July 2024
Furthermore well-reported 2024 snapshot from the Mapping the Digital Gap project, which monitors connectivity in remote Aboriginal communities, revealed that around half of these communities still do not have mobile phone coverage.
The implications of these location challenges are stark:
Limited or non-existent cellular connectivity
Reliance on landlines, satellite devices, or long-range signalling methods
Reliance on relaying emergency calls for assistance
Reduced resilience during disasters when infrastructure is degraded or lost
Even with carrier agreements to support cross-network Triple Zero calls, there remain vast coverage voids. Once again, geospatial data helps us visualise this challenge, with analyses such as those from MobileCoverage.com.au illustrating how much of the country still lies outside reliable cellular service areas.
Figure 2 - Predicted outdoor Australian cellular coverage strength for a commercial carrier, Source: Mobile Coverage
For many communities, accessing emergency services is not guaranteed. It depends on circumstance, proximity and available technology in that moment.
This is where the challenge becomes most strategic and urgent. Borrowing from the McKinsey Horizon Model, our long-term (Horizon 3) goal should be clear: ubiquitous equitable access for everyone, anywhere, at any time.
Achieving that requires us to move beyond thinking in terms of a single communication channel. Addition of SMS alone won’t solve it. Nor will any one technology. The solutions we design today must remain relevant, and inclusive, for the next decade and beyond.
3. The technology exists - but integration is holding us back
Perhaps the most striking realisation is that technologies that can improve emergency access are already here.
Just to name a few, common examples exist across multiple fronts:
eCall systems in modern vehicles automatically notifying services of accidents
Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs) and Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRBs) supporting search and rescue operations
Commercial lone worker and fleet safety solutions, such as Nova Systems’ GAP capabilities, facilitating emergency calls for assistance
But these systems are disconnected from the core Triple Zero ecosystem. In many cases, they are often the first access point for assistance, with information relayed through intermediaries only to be re-collected via voice. The same questions get asked again. The process becomes fragmented and inefficient at precisely the moment clarity is most needed.
This is not a technology problem - it’s an architectural one.
In the commercial safety environment - where there is far greater control over devices, networks, and communication protocols - we already see examples of how technology can deliver highly resilient and reliable services. There are valuable lessons here: standardisation, integration, and redundancy all contribute to great outcomes.
Our challenge is how to translate and adapt these lessons to the general community, where variability in devices, connectivity, user capability, and governing bodies is far greater. This is not trivial, but it is essential.
To address it, we also need to think end-to-end:
The user journey doesn’t start with dialling 000 - it starts at the point of need
Not all journeys include a direct voice call
Integration must replace fragmentation
Journey mapping can be a powerful tool here, helping us visualise the real-world experience across diverse scenarios and channels. It forces us to design for outcomes, not just processes.
More change is coming, with the cusp of widespread direct-to-device (D2D) satellite communications, already supported by many modern smartphones. As these capabilities become mainstream, they will reshape what “coverage” means - particularly across Australia and New Zealand.
Emergency communication will no longer be bounded by traditional infrastructure.
But to realise the full benefit, we must prepare and design systems that are:
Channel-agnostic
Scalable
Inclusive by design
Free from bias toward any one access method
Accountable for Quality of Service (QoS)
Looking ahead: what this means for Triple Zero
Importantly, progress doesn’t require perfection. Yes, we are all agreed our firm aim is clearly to achieve reliable, resilient, and available services to progressively serve more of our community in their time of need, but better is still better, even though it might not be perfect.
Triple Zero didn’t start with the levels of service available today, it evolved over 65 years - and likewise tomorrow’s solutions will improve through maturity. Our job is to come together, listen, guide innovation with a growth mindset, and introduce change in a responsible way that keeps improving community outcomes.
When you step back, a few realities become clear:
Call volumes will grow with population but also as access expands
New access mechanisms will challenge how prioritisation is achieved
The evolution of services must be balanced against the marshalling of finite resources
Governance and compliance are essential to maintaining QoS and reliability
Community education is critical. Building awareness, trust, and clarity on how to seek help and what to expect
Ultimately, this is about more than technology. It’s about building a system that reflects the needs of every member of the community - regardless of their location, ability, or circumstance. A system that meets people where they are, in whatever way they can reach out.
The vision is simple, but powerful: Help should be accessible to everyone, everywhere, in their moment of need.
At Nova Systems, I’m proud of the work our team delivers to keep people safe and secure. Our capabilities span critical communications advisory, location intelligence and geospatial services, systems integration and architecture, spectrum engineering, and satcom specialisation, enabling us to bring a multidisciplinary and highly skilled team to complex problem spaces. This is reinforced by our experience developing and operating GAP, our global alerting platform, designed with a device-agnostic architecture that enables connection of virtually any device to improve safety outcomes in commercial environments.
If you have made it this far, thank you for your time. This is not a challenge any one organisation can solve alone, it requires shared thinking and genuine collaboration across industry, community and government. If this resonates, or you are seeing similar challenges, I would welcome the chance to connect. Whether it is sharing perspectives, comparing experiences, or exploring practical ways to move forward, please reach out directly or connect with me on LinkedIn. I would value the opportunity to continue the conversation and explore how we can make a difference together