Three Dead, Including Infant, After Optus Emergency Call Failure

Optus has admitted a triple-zero outage in South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory led to three deaths.

A man walk past an Optus store in Sydney, Australia, on Oct. 26, 2024. Susan Mortimer/The Epoch Times

An eight-week-old baby is among three people confirmed dead as a result of an outage of the triple-zero (000) emergency network affecting up to 600 households in South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory.

Australia’s second-largest telco, Optus, admitted responsibility at a press conference late on Sept. 19, saying a network upgrade had gone wrong, but gave few details. Chief Executive Stephen Rue said it was not clear why only emergency calls were affected or why backup systems did not take over.

In South Australia, the victims included the infant from Gawler and a 68-year-old woman from Queenstown. Police in Western Australia said inquiries into another death were continuing.

Emergency services and state governments said they were unaware of the outage or its consequences until the evening of Sept. 19. WA’s ambulance service said it had “no briefing from Optus about any outage issues in recent days.”

Leaders Question Handling of Outage

Federal Communications Minister Anika Wells described the incident as “incredibly serious and completely unacceptable.”

“The impact of this failure has had tragic consequences, and my personal thoughts are with those who have lost a loved one,” she said, adding that all telecommunications providers are obligated to ensure they carry emergency service calls.

Australia's Minister for Communications, Anika Wells, during Question Time in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra on Nov. 8, 2022. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

Opposition spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh also raised concerns that calls had not been diverted to other carriers.

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas said Optus had not told the state government of the death of its citizens before last night’s press conference.

“I have not witnessed such incompetence from an Australian corporation in respect to communications worse than this,” he said.

An Optus public service message is displayed inside an Optus store in Sydney, Australia, on Oct. 5, 2022. Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

Rue apologised to families and customers, saying the network had since been restored and an internal investigation had been launched.

“I offer my most sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the people who passed away,” he said. “I am so sorry for your loss. What has happened is completely unacceptable. We have let you down.”

Past Outages

Optus had previously faced regulatory action over emergency services.

Less than a year ago, Optus, which is owned by Singapore Telecommunications, was fined $12 million after a nationwide outage in 2023 that left millions unable to make emergency calls from landlines.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) found Optus failed to provide emergency call access to more than 2,000 people and did not conduct welfare checks on hundreds who had tried to call emergency services.

That failure prompted the resignation of then-CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin. Rue took over in November 2024.

The company was also subjected to a major cyber attack in 2022, when the personal details of thousands of customers were leaked.

Industry observers say Optus could now face fresh fines of more than $10 million and potential legal penalties over the most recent incident.

Possible Causes  of Failure

University of Adelaide lecturer Mark Stewart, who has previously consulted for Telstra, told the ABC there were two likely potential points of failure: the network upgrade itself and a secondary failure of the “camp-on” capability that should have allowed calls to switch to another carrier.

“There is a long-standing, worldwide trend for companies to inadequately resource the testing and disaster recovery planning associated with network upgrades,” Stewart said.

AAP contributed to this story