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1h ago

Optus 000 Failure Now Linked to Four Deaths After 10-Hour Outage

Authorities are probing Optus’ handling of a prolonged emergency-call failure tied to a network upgrade.

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 says a technical fault during a firewall-related network upgrade early Thursday blocked triple-zero calls in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
  • About 600 customers were potentially affected, and welfare checks later linked four deaths to failed attempts to reach emergency services, including an eight-week-old boy and a 68-year-old woman in South Australia.
  • Authorities now say the disruption lasted around 10 hours, far longer than initially indicated, and WA’s St John Ambulance said it was not briefed by Optus during the incident.
  • CEO Stephen Rue acknowledged the company lacked alarms to detect the failure and that early complaints were not escalated, saying access was restored about 1:50pm Thursday and promising daily updates and full cooperation.
  • Federal and state investigations are being set up, ACMA oversight is expected, and coronial examinations will consider the circumstances, with substantial penalties possible given Optus’s prior emergency-call breaches.