New Zealand’s emergency call system has a problem bigger than its 1990s technology. Nobody owns it, nobody can say when it will be replaced, and the people running it cannot tell the public a consistent story about whether it works.
That last point became painfully clear in an RNZ interview with Inspector Natasha Rodley, police’s acting director for communications and dispatch. Asked whether 111 presents a fundamental risk to emergency response, she said “As of today, no”. Then RNZ read her own agency’s report back to her, which describes the system as increasingly fragile and a safety risk to the public and responders. Asked whether anything had changed since, she said no, and reversed. “I guess then I have to change my answer to ‘yes’, because I would be consistent with the report.”
Her fallback position was that both things are true: the system is “effective and solid”, but there are “opportunities to provide a far better service”. That is not a risk assessment. It is a press line that collapsed under one follow-up question.
A system with three users and no owner
The governance is the real story. Police, fire and ambulance all depend on 111, but none of them is responsible for it all or for developing it. The front end is owned and run by Spark, which has said it wants that arrangement to change.
So three public safety agencies rely on critical infrastructure none of them controls, sitting on a private telco’s network, with the telco itself signalling it wants out of the current setup. No business would accept that structure for its own core systems. Any board that discovered its most important operational platform had no single accountable owner would demand one by the next meeting.
The load is not trivial either. In January 2026, RNZ reported that 2.5 million calls a year come from mobile phones into a voice-only system that cannot take text or video, built on an operating model the National Emergency Communications Working Group of Australia and New Zealand traced back to 1958. That group found emergency services’ ability to coordinate is hindered by outdated systems, and warned the setup could back up, drop calls, or fail to prioritise properly during major disasters.
Four years, no date, no price
Police have been working on a replacement for more than four years and still cannot commit to a delivery date. The April 2026 improvement plan floated the 2027/28 financial year, which Rodley called “an aspirational date, absolutely”. The next briefing to ministers has slipped to February 2027, nine months later than forecast earlier this year. Asked whether police had researched what comparable systems cost overseas, Rodley said: “honestly, we’re just not at that stage yet.”
Four years in, there is no preliminary cost estimate. For any private-sector capital project, that would end careers. A briefing to Police Minister Mark Mitchell around a year ago listed seven key vulnerabilities and safety risks for first responders. The diagnosis is done. What is missing is ownership, a budget and a deadline.
The groundwork exists. A November 2025 white paper on the future of 111, prepared with input from Police, Fire and Emergency, Hato Hone St John and Wellington Free Ambulance, already sets out recommendations for an overhaul. Concern about 111 performance is hardly new, either. Back in 2017, officials were reporting against a target of answering 93% of calls within 15 seconds.
The cost of fragmentation is already on record
In 2024, RNZ revealed police documents showing the government had been warned the system’s flaws were causing deaths and injuries. They included a woman killed by a partner who overheard her 111 call, and a man who drowned while an ambulance was dispatched but police and Surf Rescue at the same beach were never alerted. The same documents showed the system broke down 59 times in 2021-22.
The drowning case is exactly what Rodley described as the risk to responders today: incidents where all three services need to be involved but cannot be contacted at the same time.
Why this belongs in your risk register
For rural operators, transport and logistics firms, forestry crews, construction sites and security companies, a working 111 response sits quietly underneath health and safety plans, insurance assumptions and business continuity documents. Those plans assume the system works as described publicly. Police’s internal reporting says it does not reliably coordinate responders, particularly for concurrent or multi-agency incidents.
The technology gap is widening too. In 2025, Paul Brislen, then chief executive of the Telecommunications Forum, said crash detection and helmet sensors increasingly contact emergency services automatically, but “it’s very hard for the call centre to accept those inputs”. Businesses investing in fleet telematics and lone-worker devices are buying alerts that the end of the chain cannot properly receive.
The fix starts with a decision only ministers can make: name a single accountable owner for 111, give it a budget line and hold it to a date. February 2027 is the next chance. If that briefing arrives without a cost estimate and an owner, the government will have chosen to keep calling the system solid while its own officials call it fragile, and businesses should plan accordingly.
Sources
- ODT: ‘It’s complicated’: 111 system deemed solid yet fragile and a safety risk – at the same time (2026-11-14)
- RNZ: Pressure grows to fix 111 emergency call system, with 1958 model still in use (2026-01-28)
- RNZ: Flawed 111 system causing deaths and injuries – police documents (2024-02-13)
- RNZ: Calls for government to prioritise upgrades to emergency phone-line (2025-07-04)
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