Overview

• Optus says a fault at a Dapto mobile tower in New South Wales blocked nine Triple Zero calls between 3:00am and 12:20pm on Sunday, affecting about 4,500 customers before service was restored.
• NSW Police conducted welfare checks and Optus confirmed all people who tried to reach emergency services during the outage were later found to be OK.
• The cause of the Dapto incident remains under investigation, with Optus issuing an apology and detailing the failed calls, including one caller who reached an ambulance using another phone.
• The latest failure comes 10 days after a firewall upgrade error disrupted emergency calling across multiple jurisdictions, with about 600 Triple Zero calls failing and multiple deaths linked to that earlier outage; an independent review led by Kerry Schott and an ACMA probe are underway.
• Singtel chief Yuen Kuan Moon, Optus chair John Arthur and CEO Stephen Rue are due to meet Communications Minister Anika Wells this week, as wider resilience concerns grow following separate outages reported by NBN Co and a Telstra issue affecting Triple Zero access in WA’s South West.