Australian authorities have warned that Optus will face significant consequences after a 13-hour outage left large areas of the country unable to contact emergency services. The disruption has been linked to at least three deaths, and police are investigating whether a fourth fatality was also connected to the incident.
The failure began during a network upgrade early last Thursday, cutting off access to the triple-0 emergency number for hundreds of customers. More than 600 emergency calls failed to connect, primarily affecting South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, with some calls in New South Wales also impacted.
Optus did not publicly acknowledge the outage until roughly 40 hours later, and regulators say they were only informed after services had already been restored. The delay appears to breach standard reporting requirements, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has said, and the regulator has opened an investigation.
Company admits failures in response
Optus CEO Stephen Rue said the outage was caused by a technical fault linked to a firewall upgrade. He confirmed that welfare checks found three people had died during the outage, including an infant, though police in one case later said the network failure was “unlikely” to have caused the death. Authorities in Western Australia are investigating whether a fourth person also died after being unable to reach emergency services.
Rue acknowledged that the company did not know about the problem for 13 hours despite multiple customer reports, and that those complaints were not escalated. “That is clearly not good enough,” he said. “I want to reiterate how sorry I am about the very sad loss of the lives of four people who could not reach emergency services in their time of need.”
He added that Optus would implement measures to prevent a recurrence. “What I can assure you is that actions are and will be taken to ensure this does not happen in future,” Rue said.
Government and regulator react
The ACMA described the outage and Optus’s handling of it as “deeply concerned.” “Australians must be able to contact emergency services whenever they need help. This is the most fundamental responsibility every telco provider has to the public,” a spokesperson said.
Communications Minister Anika Wells called the incident “an enormous failure on the Australian people,” saying there is “no excuse” for triple-0 outages and confirming Optus would face consequences. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Rue should consider whether he can continue in his role.
A troubled track record
This is not the first time Optus has been penalised over an outage that prevented people accessing emergency calls. In 2023 the company was fined more than A$12 million after 2,145 people were unable to connect during a separate incident, and regulators found Optus had failed to check on hundreds of affected customers afterwards.
Optus’s recent history also includes a major cyberattack in 2022 that exposed the personal data of about 9.5 million Australians. The fallout from that breach and the 2023 outage led to the resignation of former CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin; Rue took over as CEO in November 2024.
News of the latest outage hit the share price of Singapore Telecommunications, Optus’s parent company, with the stock falling 2.3% to S$4.31 on Monday—its sharpest single-day drop in nearly two months.
Daily updates promised
Investigations remain under way. Rue has pledged to provide updates as more information becomes available. “As to the full technical detail of the network failure, we will need to leave that for the investigation,” he said.
Unanswered questions include why Optus’s systems failed so severely, why the company took so long to respond, and whether the deaths linked to the outage could have been prevented.
(Photo by Jake Espedido)
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