‘Unacceptable’: Optus Admits Process Breakdowns After 000 Outage Linked to Multiple Deaths

A report has found poor communications and a lack of escalation of concerns contributed to emergency call outages.

A Optus service message is displayed on a phone outside an Optus store in Sydney, Australia, on Oct. 5, 2022. Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

Optus has publicly released the report from Dr. Kerry Schott’s independent review into a Sept. 18 outage that resulted in the emergency phone number 000 being inaccessible in parts of South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

The 14-hour outage, which impacted 75 percent of emergency calls, was prompted by a network firewall upgrade.