Overview

• Optus said a technical failure during a Thursday network upgrade prevented some emergency calls in South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, potentially affecting about 600 customers.
• Welfare checks linked to the outage found two people dead in South Australia and one in Western Australia, with further checks still under way.
• The company said normal calls continued to work, the Triple Zero fault has been fixed, and a forensic investigation is in progress with a promise of full cooperation with authorities.
• Political leaders condemned the lapse, with Communications Minister Anika Wells calling it "completely unacceptable" and South Australia’s premier announcing an independent examination of Optus’s conduct.
• Regulatory investigations are being initiated, raising the prospect of penalties under emergency-call rules following Optus’s A$12 million ACMA fine after its 2023 Triple Zero outage.