Telstra’s national mobile network outage last week was one of the worst incidents of its kind in living memory.

More than 600 calls to Triple Zero were not connected, putting lives at risk. Public transport services in New South Wales and Victoria collapsed, causing commuter chaos. And businesses, especially small to medium ones, may have lost millions in revenue.

Making matters worse, Telstra had been warned about the need to ensure that “single point of failure” problems did not cause cascading core network outages.

Now, the Australian Consumer Communications Action Network (ACCAN) is calling for the federal government to introduce mandatory domestic mobile roaming.

But what exactly is domestic mobile roaming? And could it help prevent some of the problems caused by a major outage like the one Telstra experienced last week?

Domestic mobile roaming is the ability for your mobile phone to automatically connect to mobile infrastructure that provides the strongest connection – no matter which company you pay your bills to.

This means your mobile phone could connect to mobile infrastructure owned and operated by Telstra, Optus or TPG Telcom (Vodafone) wherever you are across Australia.

This policy has widespread public support. ACCAN’s Consumer Sentiment Tracker shows 73% of 1,014 respondents supported the introduction of domestic roaming.........

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