The issues around 000 emergency calls in Australia and Samsung phones have led to tragic results. What’s going on, and what do you need to look out for to ensure you’re able to make emergency calls when you need to? Updated: The issue now affects some iPhone and Huawei Phones too.
A quick disclaimer: I don’t write much news here at ART, honestly. But with the tragic news that a person in Sydney passed away last week after being unable to make a 000 emergency call, it’s been thrust back into the foreground, and I’ve had more than a few queries from folks online and friends around the whole issue. So I thought I’d write a quick explainer. Hopefully this helps someone.
What’s the issue with Samsung phones and 000?
Users with older phones – identified at this time as Samsung models, though it could be that other devices might be affected – go to make an emergency call on 000 only to find that the call does not go through.
Update: Vodafone has updated its guidance to indicate that select iPhone and Huawei phone models may also be affected.
Isn’t 000 meant to always work? Is it faulty as a number in some way?
It’s not a fault of the number, or of the very fine people who work in what must be one of the most stressful jobs you can possibly have, but instead a chain of technology decisions made some years back relating to how phones try to access the 000 number. This needs a little bit of unpacking, but I’ll try to keep it simple.
You have an emergency – a genuine one, there’s an important point to make here now, so I’ll get it out of the way.
DO NOT CALL 000 TO “TEST” IF YOUR PHONE CAN STILL MAKE 000 CALLS.
Yes, that was shouted, deliberately.
It’s illegal, it ties up the network and could lead to tragic results for others… and what’s more, it might not tell you what you think it will tell you. Let’s get back into the unpacking how it works, shall we?
You have an emergency, you call 000. What happens then is that your call is ideally handled by your phone carrier’s network; here in Australia that’s going to be one of Telstra, Optus or Vodafone/TPG. If your network is available to you – which is to say that you’re in an coverage area for your network and there’s not some other kind of outage or blip in coverage – then the call goes through.
It’s what happens when your network is not available that appears to be at the heart of this issue.
If you’re trying to call the local pizza place and the network is down, your call doesn’t go through, you’ll have to make do with whatever’s in the fridge.
However, 000 calls are emergency calls, and they’re treated differently. If your network cannot handle carriage of a 000 call but your phone is aware of the presence of other networks, the call is shifted onto those networks to ensure (in theory) that you get the help you need.
The basic principle here is quite sound: Nobody needing the assistance of the police, ambulance or fire services should go without under any circumstances. The reality here is that unless you’re in an area with absolutely ZERO coverage from all three networks, you should be able to connect to 000.
For select phone models – currently newer model Apple iPhones and newer Google Pixel Phones – you can access Satellite SOS services even when there’s zero mobile phone coverage, but that’s not the issue at play here, so I’ll move on from that.
How does this lead to 000 calls not going through on Samsung phones, some iPhones and some Huawei Phones?
The key point to make here is that is not ALL Samsung phones; far from it. The issue with not connecting to 000 when needed only affects a selection of older Samsung phones, models at least 7 years old at this point in time. As for iPhone models, I’ll put the full table below, but it’s mostly older models from the iPhone 6 to the iPhone X that are reportedly problematic. As for Huawei, if you’ve kept a Huawei P30 or Huawei P30 Pro purchased in Australia going, it may also be affected.
The language that Samsung and the authorities are using is kind of vague, and I suspect that’s more to do with relative complexity than a straight up desire to be deceptive or anything of the kind, but you don’t have to read too far between the lines to see the likely cause given what has been said.
The issue comes down to the shutdown of 3G services in Australia. When that happened, one of the legal implements put in place was a requirement for Australian mobile carriers to block phones that could not make 000 calls from accessing the network altogether if they were devices that only used 3G technologies for making those calls.
The intent here was to be a blunt instrument; you don’t (typically) need to make 000 calls every day so you might not notice, but if your phone’s setup was 3G-only, then at some point you might come a cropper as a result of not being able to access emergency services.
Blocking those devices forced a refresh of phones to newer, more compatible phones, keeping (in theory) everyone safe. Telcos were meant to send alerts out to affected customers and in some cases they offered replacement devices to customers to help cushion some of the financial impact there.
That was a year ago. Why is this a problem now?
The problem that has emerged is that a number of older Samsung phones have been unable to connect to 000 calls despite being 4G capable devices.
It appears that the identified issue has to do with when those phone callers have to jump from Telstra or Optus networks to the Vodafone/TPG network and the call drops out.
While it hasn’t been made explicit, the fact that Samsung notes on its own alert page around the issue that
Under the Government’s Emergency Service Call Determination, all mobile network operators are required to block devices from their networks that are not configured to access emergency call services
does strongly point to the fact that it’s a 3G issue, and the most likely scenario here is that the fallback position for those phones was to drop to 3G if the primary network was not available.
Honestly, at the time, that was probably the smartest play that these devices could make; 3G network coverage was higher than 4G and especially 5G years back, so going for the most widely available signal for emergency calls was arguably the right call – up until 3G networks no longer existed.
This is also why — just to be clear — calling 000 to “test” your phone is a poor move; not only is it illegal, but unless you’re in the middle of a network outage or coverage issue, you’d just go through on your primary network, not on a fallback one which is where the issue appears to reside. Once again, though:
DO NOT CALL 000 TO “TEST” IF YOUR PHONE CAN STILL MAKE 000 CALLS.
What can I do if I’ve got an older Samsung, Apple or Huawei phone?
You should be contacted by your telco to indicate that there’s an issue with your phone and that it will need to be replaced, though that’s a smaller subset of the total number of phones. Of the identified handsets, 60 of them may need a software update, while only 11 require replacement outright.
As such, if you are concerned, the smartest move is to ensure that you’ve run updates to their full extent. On most Samsung phones that should be a question of heading to the Settings App, opening up the Software Update panel and applying any available updates. Huawei, being Android based when the P30/P30 Pro were current follow a similar path.
For Apple phones it’s broadly similar; open up Settings, then General, then Software Update. Once that’s done, do a search in settings for VoLTE and ensure that’s enabled too.
As per Samsung, if your phone reports that it’s running the most up-to-date software version, then the fix for 000 calls is already in place.
Why wasn’t this noticed when the 3G networks were shut down last year?
It’s a good question, and just like every other time somebody says something is a good question, they’re stalling for time… and the reality here is that your humble correspondent doesn’t know.
It appears to have been far more a question of omission, because the affected handsets could access 000 on their primary networks, and it was a scenario that crossed both handset manufacturers and multiple telecommunication networks.
Should it have been addressed? Absolutely.
Is it only Samsung phones? Is it all Samsung phones?
To answer the second question first, no, it’s only a selection of older Samsung phones.
Update: And as per Vodafone, also some Apple iPhone and Huawei Phone devices.
I’ll drop Samsung’s officially published list at the end of this article so you can check, but if you’ve got a newer Samsung device, you don’t have this particular concern.
As for the first question… I can’t say for sure without opening up a testing lab and getting hold of every single phone used in Australia for the last 20 years (feels like that might be expensive), but it’s kind of unlikely that it’s only Samsung devices affected.
It is in a way a question of the way Australians have purchased smartphones over the past decade or so that means that Samsung models have been highlighted, because for the longest time the lion’s share of the smartphone market has been owned by Apple and Samsung, with most other phone makers only having a fragmentary slice of the pie.
I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t other handsets and manufacturers affected, and hopefully there’s a whole lot of cross-network testing going on with everything that the telcos can see on their networks to detect any other potentially compromised handsets.
One other note here: What we’re talking about are handsets sold in Australia and designed to be working on Australian networks.
When the 3G networks shut down there were a whole host of folks with imported smartphones that got caught in the 3G shutdown trap because they weren’t built for Australian networks in the first place.
Will those phones be stuck in this situation too? It’s hard to say, but it does highlight a very real risk that you’d be taking by purchasing a phone designed for overseas networks.
Which Samsung Phones are affected?
As per Samsung, the following models are affected and will need to be replaced outright; if you’ve got one of these, your telco should have sent you an SMS or contacted you regarding the issue:
Other models require a software update, at which point, as per Samsung, they should not have an issue contacting 000 in an emergency:
Which iPhones are affected?
As per Vodafone the following models may have an issue calling 000. Here’s the models and suggested remedies:
Which Huawei Phones are affected?
Just two Huawei phones are noted by Vodafone as being potentially problematic — though given the number of years it’s been since Huawei phones were widely available in Australia, if you’re holding on to an even older model, it’s probably a good time to think about upgrading anyway.
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