Overview

• Optus says a routine firewall upgrade around 12:30am on September 18 triggered a fault that blocked some emergency calls for about 13 to 14 hours across South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and parts of New South Wales.
• Regulator Nerida O'Loughlin said ACMA was not told of the scale until after the incident was resolved and later confirmed 624 Triple Zero calls were affected, describing initial Optus emails as perfunctory and inaccurate.
• Communications Minister Anika Wells said Optus had "failed the Australian people" and should expect significant consequences, while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he would be surprised if CEO Stephen Rue was not considering his position.
• Optus acknowledged at least five customers tried to warn its call centres about failed 000 calls but staff did not escalate because systems showed no red flags, and reports indicate the public was informed roughly 40 hours after initial signs.
• The company plans an independent review and a compulsory escalation process for any Triple Zero issues, as scrutiny intensifies following a separate 2023 outage that led to more than $12 million in penalties and renewed questions about sector resilience.