Overview

• Optus says a planned network upgrade caused emergency-call failures across South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, affecting about 600 customers and being linked to four deaths following welfare checks.
• Police identified an eight-week-old boy and a 68-year-old woman in South Australia and a 74-year-old man in Western Australia among the deceased, while WA Police advised a fourth person likely attempted to call 000 during the outage.
• South Australian authorities say 000 access was down for roughly 10 hours on Thursday, with separate reporting indicating the disruption may have stretched closer to 14 hours, and Optus says access was restored about 1:50 pm.
• Optus attributes the failure to a firewall upgrade and acknowledges there were no alarms to flag that 000 calls were not reaching services, as concerns are raised that ‘camp-on’ fallback arrangements may not have worked.
• The company is under fire for delayed notifications to authorities, with WA’s ambulance service saying it was not briefed and SA’s premier condemning the communication, and Optus admits two customer warnings on Thursday morning were not escalated; ACMA and other bodies are preparing investigations and potential penalties, and Optus pledges to publish its findings.