The fallout from Telstra’s national network outage on Wednesday was widespread, stalling trains and electronic payments, and preventing emergency calls to Triple Zero connecting. The company conducted more than 600 welfare checks on people unable to contact the emergency hotline, with seven people needing assistance.

Errors with emergency calls continued into Thursday morning. But by Thursday afternoon, Telstra’s Chief Financial Officer Michael Ackland said customers can “feel confident” calling Triple Zero.

While emergency calls have understandably gained the most attention, there are myriad other ways Australians’ health and wellbeing rely on stable network coverage. When disrupted, these are harder to measure.

Health is now connected and digital

In the post-COVID era, health care in Australia comes in many forms.

While many people still see clinicians in person, these visits are supplemented with remote monitoring of symptoms, telephone calls, videocalls, as well as apps and internet-based information sources for self-management.

So when Australia’s largest telecom provider goes down, it isn’t just emergency services like 000 that we lose.

Many people use their mobile data to access health information and to support their wellbeing. This could mean chatting to an AI bot about mental health, looking up information about a condition or........

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