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24m ago

Fourth Death Linked to Optus 000 Outage as Botched Firewall Update Blamed

Regulators vow inquiries into failed failover mechanisms after Optus blamed a firewall upgrade for blocking 000 in SA, WA and NT.

View of an Optus shop in Sydney, Australia November 8, 2023. REUTERS/Kirsty Needham/File Photo
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South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas blasted the telco's slow and "bewildering" response, vowing it would be held to account for the outage that affected approximately 600 triple-zero calls.

Overview

  • Optus said welfare checks have identified a fourth death tied to the outage, including an eight-week-old boy and a 68-year-old woman in South Australia and a 74-year-old man in Western Australia.
  • The interruption to emergency calls lasted about 10 hours on Thursday, with Optus stating normal calls worked but triple-zero did not, and about 600 customers were potentially impacted.
  • CEO Stephen Rue said a firewall upgrade caused the failure and no alarms flagged the problem, with the company first alerted by a customer before South Australia Police notified Optus.
  • State leaders criticised Optus’ communication, with South Australia’s premier saying authorities were not fully informed before the company’s press conference, and St John WA reporting it received no briefing.
  • Optus has launched internal and independent investigations and pledged full cooperation with ACMA and other agencies, with welfare checks continuing and potential multi‑million‑dollar penalties possible.