Optus failure a wake-up call
Older Australians rely on their phones in an emergency. When the system doesn’t work, with fatal consequences, we need answers and assurances.
For generations, we’ve been told to dial 000 in an emergency – be it a medical issue, a fire, or a police matter – and help will be on its way.
But twice in the past two weeks, customers of one of Australia’s biggest telcos went without that vital lifeline.
About 600 calls to the triple zero service did not get through in that first, 13-hour outage. According to media reports, four people died after emergency calls could not be connected.
Optus released a statement on Monday, 29 September, saying:
“On Thursday 18 September, Optus conducted a network upgrade and within this process a technical failure impacted Triple Zero calls.
“This resulted in the failure of a number of triple zero calls in South Australia, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia, and a small number of calls in New South Wales near the South Australian border that were connected to the South Australian network.
“Optus apologises unreservedly for this failure which resulted in a number of customers being unable to get through to emergency services in their time of need.
“Normal calls were still connecting during this period. This technical failure has now been rectified.”
The statement noted that another outage affected customers in Dapto, about 100km southwest of Sydney, on Sunday, 28 September, leading to nine unanswered emergency calls.
While the full facts have not yet come to light, one disturbing claim is that Optus failed to act on warnings from customers on 18 September that the emergency service was not working.
Questions have also been raised about the way Optus handled the flow of information about the outage to government, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), and the media.
Both Optus, which was fined $12 million for a similar breach in 2023, and ACMA are investigating exactly what went wrong.
The ACMA probe will focus on Optus’s obligations to:
Ensure that emergency calls are successfully carried to the emergency call service at all times
Communicate information about the outage to customers and the public, including putting relevant and up-to-date information on its website and using apps, email, SMS, other media, or call centres to keep the public informed
Notify the "emergency call person" (Telstra, which operates the triple zero call centre) as soon as possible about a significant network outage
Communicate information about the outage to other stakeholders including the relevant ministerial portfolio department, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, the National Emergency Management Agency and the ACMA.
This investigation will take many months. In the meantime, Australians are entitled to assurances that the triple zero system is robust – not just at Optus but also at the other telecommunication companies.
Telstra reported a 12-hour outage in southern Western Australia on Monday, 29 September, but said there were no triple-zero failures during that time.
All Australians, not just seniors, should have the confidence that ambulance, fire brigade, and police services are a phone-call away.
One thing is clear: this must never happen again.
