Every day, millions of Australians rely on their cars to get to work, to school, and back home again. With 19.8 million registered vehicles, and an estimated 264 billion vehicle kilometres travelled, road safety remains a serious concern. Data from the National Road Safety Data Hub shows Australia's road deaths increased again in 2025, rising 1.7% to 1,314 fatalities. The road toll has risen every year since January 2021.

Reducing the impact of accidents with eCall services

Today's cars are more connected than ever, with built-in systems that can monitor driving conditions, communicate with service centres, and alert drivers to potential hazards. Road safety features are constantly improving too, including new ways to communicate during an emergency so that help can be deployed faster when it matters most. One of these is eCall services.

eCall services are systems that automatically place an emergency call when a vehicle is involved in a serious road accident. When a crash is detected, the system transmits a minimum set of data (MSD) to a triage centre. This data includes vehicle identification, the time of the accident and the vehicle's direction of travel, giving responders critical information before they even arrive at the scene.

The core benefit is response speed. Crash detection and eCall services are designed to reduce the time it takes for medical help to reach the scene of an accident.

eCall has been mandatory in all new car models in the European Union since 2018, contributing to faster emergency response times across the bloc. One study reported by the ABC suggests eCall services could save 200 lives and prevent 2500 injuries in Australia each year.

Bringing Private eCall services to more Australian vehicles with Cubic³ 

Cubic³, a Telstra Wholesale customer, provides connectivity solutions for software-defined vehicles across 200+ countries and territories. With access to 550+ mobile networks, it helps automotive, agricultural, and transport OEMs simplify global connectivity, stay compliant, and scale efficiently. Cubic³ wanted to provide a Private eCall service to Volkswagen AG in Australia. They approached Telstra Wholesale to help enable it.

"Getting Private eCall to market in Australia required a network partner prepared to take on genuinely new technical ground. Telstra Wholesale did that, and the result is a solution that meets the European standard and is ready for whatever regulatory direction Australia takes next," said David Kelly, Chief Corporate Officer, Cubic³.

The technical complexity behind Private eCall

Private eCall functionality has been available in Australia for some time in a small number of car models. However, Cubic³ and Volkswagen AG specified that their solution should be based on European eCall standards. These standards mandate that the Minimum Set of Data (MSD) is sent within a SIP call (a voice or multimedia communication over an internet connection). As this was new to the Australian market, delivering the underlying network capability to provide Private eCall to Cubic³ and Volkswagen AG’s specifications was technically complex.
"Enabling MSD over SIP on our network required significant design and development,” said Telstra Wholesale Executive Justin Caswell. “At the time, Australian network equipment didn’t support the carrying of crash data over SIP.”

Furthermore, the use of Call Waiting to send additional information was not supported by the IoT network, as IoT devices don’t normally have three party calls.

“Our product and technology teams worked closely with equipment suppliers and made changes at a network level to enable Private eCall and support MSD over SIP.” Caswell said. “We’re pleased to be able to deliver a solution that met Cubic³‘s requirements and the European eCall standard.”

Delivering road safety improvements and future-ready services to Australia

The Private eCall solution means Cubic³ and Volkswagen AG are the first in Australia to implement MSD over SIP.
“Telstra Wholesale understood what we were trying to achieve and worked through the technical complexity to get there. Now that the solution is live in Audi's R and RS models, we can look at extending it across other Volkswagen AG vehicles in Australia,” said Kelly.

There are some important differences between this Private eCall solution and the European eCall standard. For example, Private eCall connects to a private triage centre rather than a national emergency centre. However, the solution follows the European standard for eCall, meaning that if Australia were ever to adopt the standard nationally, the technical groundwork is already in place.

Ultimately the solution means if a Private eCall-enabled car is in an accident, it would help enable emergency services to respond.