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3h ago

Minister Rebukes Optus After New Triple‑Zero Failure, Seeks External Oversight

Following a meeting with both companies’ leaders, the communications minister urged appointing an independent accountability partner to rebuild trust.

View of an Optus shop in Sydney, Australia November 8, 2023. REUTERS/Kirsty Needham/File Photo
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Optus -- one of Australia's top telecoms providers -- said the outage on Sunday impacted thousands of people in New South Wales

Overview

  • Optus confirmed a Dapto, NSW tower fault on Sunday disrupted services for about 4,500 customers between 3:00am and 12:20pm, with nine triple‑zero calls failing.
  • The telco said police welfare checks verified all affected callers are OK, service has been restored, and the cause is still under investigation.
  • The incident is the second triple‑zero failure in 10 days, following a September 18 outage during a firewall upgrade that blocked hundreds of emergency calls and has been linked to multiple deaths.
  • Optus has launched an independent review led by Kerry Schott, while ACMA is conducting its own investigation into the earlier nationwide failure.
  • After meeting Optus CEO Stephen Rue and Singtel CEO Yuen Kuan Moon, Minister Anika Wells cited a serious lack of public confidence, called for an external accountability partner, and fielded fresh calls for mandated technical oversight and answers on why the ‘camp‑on’ failover did not work.