Embattled telco Optus has apologised for a second triple-zero outage in less than a fortnight, as local executives prepare for showdown talks with their Singaporean owners.
The latest issue was linked to a mobile phone tower in Dapto, New South Wales, which affected around 4,500 users in the area on Sunday between 3:00 am and 12:20 pm. A review by Optus identified nine failed calls to triple zero (000), but the company says those affected “are OK” and the issue has since been rectified.
Among those impacted, one caller required an ambulance and had to use another phone to contact emergency services. Another person tried to call emergency services but was unable to get through, inadvertently making accidental calls instead.
These incidents have alarmed both Australians and the government, including Communications Minister Anika Wells. Ms Wells has requested discussions with representatives from Optus’s parent company, Singtel, who are scheduled to visit Australia this week.
This failure marks the third major Optus outage in two weeks that prevented people from accessing emergency services. On September 18, a scheduled firewall upgrade in South Australia triggered a communications outage linked to the deaths of three Australians.
Optus chief executive Stephen Rue attributed that fault to human error. While normal calls were largely unaffected, the outage blocked approximately 600 triple-zero calls from connecting to emergency services. The disruption affected customers in South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and New South Wales.
As Optus works to resolve these critical issues, the focus remains on safeguarding emergency service accessibility for all users.
https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/technology/fresh-triple-zero-outage-for-embattled-telco-optus-c-20173157