Australia’s new telco outage registers: what voice teams should use them for
From 30 June 2026, Australian carriers are required to publish registers covering major and significant local outages. For business voice teams, those registers provide useful external context, but they do not replace local monitoring or prove that a particular failed call belongs to a listed event.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) says the registers must present outage information consistently to improve transparency and analysis. The rules distinguish major outages from significant local outages and include thresholds for regional and remote services.
What the register can tell you
- whether a carrier has acknowledged a qualifying outage;
- the affected area and service type described publicly;
- the reported start, updates and resolution; and
- whether an event should be added to an internal incident timeline.
What it cannot prove
| Observation | Why more evidence is needed |
|---|---|
| No event appears in the register | The fault may be smaller, newer, outside a reporting threshold or confined to your service |
| An outage covers your area | Your failed call still needs a matching timestamp and route |
| The carrier marks an event resolved | Registrations, routes or customer equipment may not have recovered automatically |
Add it to the incident workflow
Record the register entry or carrier advisory alongside PBX alarms, failed Call-IDs and site connectivity. After the carrier reports restoration, run inbound, outbound and emergency-call checks using the approved test process. Do not make a live Triple Zero call merely to test availability.
The register is corroborating evidence, not a substitute for a call trace. It is most useful when it helps align a carrier event with the exact time and direction of your own failures.
Related: VoIP monitoring, failover planning and emergency calling.
Official sources
Scheduled for 25 August 2026. This is operational information, not legal advice.