Samsung has warned the federal triple zero inquiry and mobile carriers not to rely on legacy technologies for triple zero calls if they add new voice capabilities to their networks in the transition to 5G.
The phone manufacturer also told the inquiry committee that it supported the Australian telco industry’s push to establish a publicly available register of mobile phones that meet domestic voice calling and network standards.
The register, the telcos hope, will make it easier for consumers to spot grey market devices that haven’t been tested as capable of placing triple zero calls reliably.
“Samsung encourages industry alignment on enabling both emergency calling and non‑emergency calling on a network at the same time, when new network voice capabilities are introduced, to avoid dependency on older technologies for emergency calling,” the phone maker recommended to committee.
The consumer electronics giant said the issue would become “relevant” as carriers moved more voice calling traffic from their 4G networks to their 5G networks using Vo5G.
“This will become relevant for future network changes, for example in relation to the 5G network. Samsung’s commercial practice is aligned with this direction, and we will continue to work cooperatively with MNOs as they plan future voice service transitions,” Samsung added.
The government’s triple zero inquiry was established in response to the September Optus outage that led to emergency call failures linked to at least three fatalities.
A flurry of media reports about the reliability of a group of older Samsung handset models has pushed the vendor near the centre of a furore around the outage.
However, Samsung says its devices are not the only brand of handsets impacted by triple zero calling problems.
Samsung did not name other brands in its submission, but it has now provided its fullest account yet of its side of the story, calling for some accountability from both the Australian Communications and Media Authority and mobile network operators for their roles in triple zero call failures.
Tracing emergency calling problems
Samsung recommendation is in reference to its dealings with Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) during that telco’s rollout of 4G network services from 2013 and later up until about 2021 – a time during which it merged with TPG to become TPG Telecom.
As iTnews reported late last week, designed primarily to carry data and lift internet capacity demand off the Vodafone 3G network, its then-new 4G network had limited emergency calling capability until 2020 when VoLTE (Voice over LTE) devices became widely available.
Until then, TPG Telecom confirmed to iTnews, VHA and later TPG Telecom overwhelmingly relied on the 3G layer of the Vodafone network to provide emergency calling services.
It was, TPG Telecom said, due to a lack of available 4G devices compatible with VoLTE – it’s main technology to carry voice services on the network.
“TPG Telecom enabled VoLTE (Voice over LTE) on its 4G network in 2015. At that time, only a small proportion of handsets supported VoLTE, and 3G remained the predominant coverage layer for emergency calling.
“This ensured triple zero capability was always available via 3G, which had slightly broader coverage than 4G during that period,” a TPG Telecom spokesman said.
TPG Telecom only began testing VoLTE for emergency calling across the 4G layer of its network in earnest around 2020.
It then began supporting wide use of the emergency calling compatible component of VoLTE, called eVoLTE, across its 4G network in 2021.
“From 2015 onward, VoLTE was active for early 4G adopters and formed part of our roadmap for broader 4G adoption and eventual 3G closure. In 2020, we began dedicated device testing for emergency VoLTE (e-VoLTE) capability,” TPG Telecom told iTnews last week.
Samsung told iTnews that it didn’t test its older Samsung handsets emergency voice call capabilities on TPG Telecom’s 4G network from 2015 to around 2021 for roughly the same reason – the network didn’t support emergency calls during that time.
However, last week Samsung told iTnews that from around July 2021 it pushed software updates to 60 of the 71 devices that could be patched to make them capable VoLTE calls – particularly eVoLTE emergency calls.
The software technology used in the remaining 11 handsets is too old to be patched, it’s understood.
Telstra, Optus and TPG Telecom have all moved to block problem devices in line with new rules the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) introduced mid-October.
They are giving customers found to be using affected Samsung devices notice of the problem as they discover them and, from then, between 28 and 35 days to act or face having their handsets blocked.
ACMA formally introduced the new rules using its Emergency Call Services determination powers after the September Optus outage and roughly around the same time that Telstra’s testing discovered the firmware problem.
Events took an arguably extraordinary and tragic turn for the worse for Samsung and TPG Telecom in November. TPG telecom reported that one of its Lebara-branded network customers, who was relying on one of affected Samsung handsets, died in circumstances understood to involve triple zero calling. (link)
The ACMA has now confirmed to iTnews that it currently has two investigations afoot into the emergency calling issue with the handsets involving both Samsung and TPG Telecom.
Register backing
In its response to the triple zero inquiry, Samsung also backed recent calls from mobile network operators, voiced through its lobby the Australian Telecommunications Alliance, for the government to establish a publicly available register of mobile devices.
As first reported by iTnews, the ATA is working with carriers to establish a closed database of devices that comply with technical calling standards, including those for placing emergency calls.
More recently, however, the ATA has called for the ACMA to control the central database instead, asking for it to do so by making its register of devices created through its voluntary device compliance labelling mechanism public.
“Samsung supports the development of a public register of devices supplied into the Australian market (with supplier declarations of conformity and associated endorsed test reports).
“This would provide a transparent, authoritative source of device compliance information and improve consistency in mobile network operator identification of unsupported devices,” it wrote to the committee in its submission.
The government’s triple zero hearing is currently scheduled to resume in parliament this week.