Overview

• The outage followed a 12:30 a.m. firewall change on September 18 and lasted about 13–14 hours, preventing 624 emergency calls, largely affecting South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
• Optus says it did not detect failures to Triple Zero, with at least five customer warnings not escalated until a 1:30 p.m. report revealed the scale of the problem.
• The company reported three customer deaths identified through welfare checks, while ACMA says the incident is being examined in connection with four deaths.
• ACMA says it was informed only after the outage ended and criticized perfunctory, inaccurate emails, as the communications minister warned of significant consequences and the prime minister questioned the CEO’s position.
• Optus will appoint an independent reviewer and introduce compulsory escalation for Triple Zero reports, following earlier penalties exceeding $12 million for a 2023 emergency-call failure.