Canberra: Australian officials have warned that telecommunications giant Optus will face significant consequences following a nationwide outage that left millions without emergency access and has been linked to several deaths.
The 13-hour disruption prevented hundreds of people across more than half of the country from calling triple-0. Optus, one of Australia’s two major telecom providers, has since confirmed that at least three people died during the outage, while police in Western Australia believe a fourth person also lost their life after failing to connect to emergency services.
Optus chief executive Stephen Rue apologised to the families of the victims and the wider public, describing the failure as ‘completely unacceptable.’ Stephen Rue admitted the company was unaware of the disruption for 13 hours despite customer complaints, which were not escalated.
Stephen Rue remarked that, “I would like to reiterate how sorry I am about the very sad loss of the lives of four people who could not reach emergency services in their time of need. Actions are and will be taken to ensure this does not happen in future.”
The outage saw more than 600 emergency calls fail, primarily in South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory. Calls in parts of New South Wales were also affected. Despite the scale of the disruption, Optus did not inform the public until 40 hours after services were restored, and regulators were notified only after the crisis had ended, a breach of standard practice, according to the Australian Media and Communications Authority (Acma).
The watchdog said it was deeply concerned by both the failure and the company’s handling of it. Optus is already under scrutiny after a 2023 outage that denied more than 2,000 people access to emergency services, resulting in penalties exceeding $8 million (A$12 million)
Communications Minister Anika Wells said the latest incident represented an enormous failure on the Australian people, adding that she had expressed her unbelievable disappointment directly to Rue. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has suggested the Optus boss should consider stepping down. Investigations into the outage are ongoing, with Optus pledging daily updates as more details emerge.
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