How does Victorias Emergency Communications work?
Australia has in the past few years privatized it’s telephone services; however the emergency telephone number 0-0-0 (our equivalent to 9-1-1) remained with the original government provider Telstra. All calls from the public are received by Telstra and an operator will ask the caller which emergency service is required: police, fire or ambulance. A management system identifies the location of the caller and insures that the call is forwarded to the correct State Emergency Communications Centre (SECC). It is not unusual for a call originating in Melbourne to be answered by a Telstra operator in Sydney or Brisbane, some thousands of miles from where the assistance is required. All 0-0-0 calls have Caller Line Identification (CLI) and are then routed to the appropriate SECC. We also have an additional emergency number 11444 which routes directly to the SECC. This line does not have CLI and we are trying to discourage it’s use as an emergency number. We do not at this stage have a non emer
