Optus triple zero outage : Optus has confirmed that a failed firewall upgrade caused a 13-hour disruption to triple zero services across South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory.
At a snap press conference last night, Chief Executive Officer Stephen Rue admitted the outage prevented hundreds of emergency calls from going through on Thursday, leading to the deaths of three people.
The victims included an eight-week-old baby from Gawler West in South Australia, a 68-year-old woman from Queenstown in Adelaide, and a 74-year-old man from Western Australia.
This afternoon, WA Premier Roger Cook stated that a possible second death had been reported in the state.
“We are still awaiting confirmation of this latest incident,” Cook said.
This is an absolutely devastating tragedy, and it is deeply disappointing that such an event has taken place.”
CEO Stephen Rue Admits Serious Communication Lapses
It is extremely disappointing how this situation was communicated — to the government, to the authorities, and to the public,” Rue said.
He confirmed that the firewall upgrade commenced at 12:30am on Thursday, and by around 9am, two customers had already contacted the company’s call centre to report the outage.
According to Rue, an early review indicated that this information was not escalated to the appropriate department. Two formal complaints have since been lodged with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman.
“I will share more details in due course, but I want to be transparent — we now know two individuals had already informed us they were unable to reach Triple Zero,” Rue said. “Unfortunately, that information was not escalated at the time.”
By 1:30pm, another customer reached out to Optus, after which access to Triple Zero was restored.
Rue added that around 600 people were unable to contact emergency services during the outage.
Politicians slam telco
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas strongly criticised the Optus CEO last night, saying neither he nor the state’s emergency services were informed about the two deaths in South Australia.
South Australian police didn’t know. No one in SAAS or the ambulance service knew. My office didn’t know. And yet they went ahead and held a press conference,” Malinauskas said.
I have never seen such incompetence from an Australian corporation when it comes to communication — nothing worse than this,” he added.
Western Australia’s Premier, Roger Cook, also condemned the telco, calling the outage “completely unacceptable.
Emergency service authorities in both South Australia and Western Australia said they were unaware of the breakdown until Optus held an unscheduled press conference at 5:45pm.
In 2023, Optus was fined $12 million over a similar outage that left 2000 people unable to reach triple zero. At the time, the company promised such an incident would never happen again.
Federal Communications Minister Anika Wells also criticised the telco, saying Optus had “let Australians down when they needed them the most.
We never want to see failures like this, and we are deeply disappointed that it has happened again,” Wells said.
South Australian Premier Labels It “Unprecedented Incompetence
No Triple Zero outage is ever acceptable, and this incident will be thoroughly investigated,” officials said.
It must have been incredibly distressing for people in an emergency, calling Triple Zero and being unable to get through. The impact of this failure has had tragic consequences, and my thoughts are with the families affected today.
Under Australian law, Optus and all telecommunications providers are required to ensure access to emergency services.
Optus has let Australians down at a time when they needed them most, and this simply isn’t good enough,” the statement added.
Technology expert Trevor Long described the outage as “a more fundamental failure than the previous one” because, even though network coverage was available, people still could not connect to emergency services.
The Optus network as a whole could make and receive calls, and customers could call each other,” Long explained on Weekend Today. “But the triple zero component of the network failed.
The outage was traced back to a technical error in a network update, which disabled emergency calls across South Australia, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia.
Leave a Reply