Telecommunications giant Optus has been hit by another Triple Zero outage, leaving thousands of customers in the Illawarra region of NSW unable to reach emergency services for more than nine hours — less than two weeks after a similar failure was linked to multiple deaths.
Key Takeaways
- Optus suffered a fresh outage on Sunday in Dapto, NSW, leaving around 4,500 customers unable to contact emergency services between 3am and 12:20pm.
- Nine Triple Zero calls failed to connect, with one caller requiring an ambulance and resorting to another phone.
- Police have confirmed that all callers who attempted to contact emergency services were unharmed.
- Optus is continuing to investigate the cause of the issue and has apologised to affected customers.
- The incident follows a major outage on 18 September that blocked about 600 emergency calls across multiple states and was linked to three deaths.
Crucial Quote
“We have investigated the impact of the issue on calls made between 3am and 12.20pm yesterday, including calls made to the Triple Zero network, and have confirmed with police, all callers who attempted to contact emergency services are OK”, an Optus spokesperson said.
Key Background
Optus, Australia’s second-largest telecommunications provider, is under intense scrutiny following a string of recent network failures.
Earlier this month, a major outage blocked more than 600 emergency calls across South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. The disruption has been linked to the deaths of three Australians.
Optus CEO Stephen Rue attributed the incident to human error during a firewall upgrade, prompting federal regulators to investigate whether the company and its parent, Singapore-based Singtel, have invested adequately in emergency service infrastructure.
The Dapto incident comes days before a scheduled meeting between Singtel chief executive Yuen Kuan Moon, and Communications Minister Anika Wells in Sydney.
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