Three people have died after a “technical failure” impacted hundreds of triple-0 calls on the Optus network, its CEO has revealed.
Stephen Rue confirmed late Friday afternoon that a technical problem resulted in the failure of triple-0 emergency calls in South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
The calls were impacted by a network update on Thursday, the CEO said.
Two of the deaths were from South Australia and one was from Western Australia.
“Our investigation is ongoing but at this stage I can confirm that approximately 600 customers were potentially impacted, of which a proportion of their calls did not go through,” Mr Rue said.
“During the process of conducting welfare checks, three of the triple-0 calls involved households where a person tragically passed away.”
He confirmed the technical failure has now been rectified.
“I want to offer a sincere apology to all customers who could not connect to emergency services when they needed them most,” he added.
“I am so sorry for your loss. What has happened is completely unacceptable. We have let you down.”
Mr Rue confirmed that normal calls were going through in those regions and it was just the triple-0 service that was affected.
“You have my assurance that we are conducting a thorough investigation and once concluded, we will share the facts of the incident publicly,” he said.
Stephen Rue said the failure was “unacceptable”. (ABC News: John Gunn)
“We will cooperate fully and transparently with all relevant government agencies and regulatory bodies while we investigate this matter further.”
This is not the first time an Optus service failure has disrupted triple-0 calls.
Optus experienced a nationwide network outage on 8 November 2023 which caused significant disruption across Australia for individuals and businesses.
The ACMA found Optus failed to provide access to the emergency call service for 2,145 people during the course of that outage.
Optus then failed to conduct 369 welfare checks on people who had tried to make an emergency call during the outage.
The telecommunications company was subsequently hit with more than $12 million in penalties.
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