Australian operator Telstra paid a fine of more than AUD3 million ($1.9 million) and took a number of steps to rectify its processes following a technical disruption at its emergency call centre.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) noted the operator updated its backup phone number list and appointed an independent consultant to conduct a review after the agency found it failed to comply with emergency call rules.

An investigation spotted 473 breaches of the rules during an incident on 1 March, when Telstra’s call centre had trouble transferring calls to emergency services for 90 minutes.

It initiated a contingency process to transfer calls using a list of backup numbers, but several were incorrect, resulting in 127 calls not being passed over.

The operator managed those calls by providing the caller details to emergency service organisations via email and phone calls, ACMA explained.

ACMA member and consumer lead Samantha Yorke noted it was concerning the breaches occurred because Telstra neglected to update its backup phone data.

Yorke acknowledged Telstra had a strong record of compliance in its role as the national emergency operator and made considerable efforts to keep the public informed during the outage.

She added Telstra took a variety of immediate actions when problems were identified, which “go a long way to restoring the community’s trust in this critical service”.

In October, ACMA introduced rules to ensure mobile subscribers can access emergency services after operators switch off 3G networks.