Emergency warnings and safety in emergency situations

Vodafone Australia is proud to have worked with government and emergency services to deliver the capability to send location based emergency alert messages to users of our network in cases of localised or broader emergencies.

This capability enables emergency service agencies to send appropriate warning messages to all customers connected to the Vodafone network based on their current location in times of natural disaster or crisis.

Emergency alerts work across all Vodafone supplied network technologies.

Vodafone does not charge emergency services a fee for delivery of these messages.

See more information about emergency alerts.

If you have an iPhone, you can make yourself aware of potential danger in your area by using the government Disaster Watch app. The app provides publicly available news and information about disaster events in Australia via direct feeds from a range of authoritative sources in the states and territories and nationally. The information will be regularly updated. Please note: this app does not provide direct emergency alert warnings to users.

The national emergency broadcaster ABC also provides information on emergencies.

Other websites and apps are available for more local information, including:

National

• Australian Maritime Safety Authority
• Australian Federal Police Operations Coordination Centre

Emergency calls

It's important that you can contact emergency services should the need arise. So, even outside our coverage area you'll be able to call emergency services using any other available mobile network (your phone will show something similar to 'SOS only' or 'Emergency calls only' when you do). Emergency calls should only be used to request help from an emergency service organisation in a life threatening and/or time critical event.

What it costs

There is no charge for calls made to emergency services regardless of whether your service is active or inactive.

There are 2 emergency call numbers you can dial from your mobile:

000 within Australia

112 both within and outside Australia

You can use the above numbers to contact emergency service organisations, including police, fire and ambulance. There's more information about emergency calls on the federal government's triple zero website.

• If you dial 112 while you're in a coverage area overseas, you'll be connected to the emergency service for that country
• In Australia emergency calls to Triple Zero can be made with or without an active SIM in your phone.
• If your phone does not have access to the Vodafone network you may still be able to make an emergency call on another mobile network, which is why you may see 'Emergency calls only' or similar on the screen.
• Emergency calls can be made wherever your phone can see any mobile telecommunications network, however if you are travelling in a rural or remote area you should not rely upon your mobile phone to make an emergency call as there may be no mobile telecommunications network available, instead you should have other means of communications such as a satellite phone and for emergencies carry an emergency beacon.
• When calling an emergency call number, information such as your number, name and service location (where available) will be disclosed to emergency service organisations, regardless of your call settings.