Three people have died after Triple Zero calls were interrupted during an Optus network upgrade on Thursday.
An outage affected emergency calls in South Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia.
‘During the process of conducting welfare checks, three of the triple zero calls involved households where a person tragically passed away,’ Optus Chief Executive Stephen Rue said on Friday.
Two of the people were from SA, the third person was from WA.
‘Our investigation is ongoing, but at this stage I can confirm that 600 customers were potentially impacted, of which a proportion of their calls did not go through,’ Mr Rue said late on Friday.
‘I have been advised that during the process of conducting welfare checks, three of the triple zero calls involved households where a person tragically passed away.
‘I can confirm that this technical failure has now been rectified.’
Mr Rue said welfare checks were ongoing.
Optus is investigating an outage affecting potentially ‘600’ customers (above, an Optus store in Melbourne)
‘I want to offer a sincere apology to all customers who could not connect to emergency services when they needed them most, and I offer my most sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the people who passed away,’ he said.
‘I am so sorry for your loss.’
During the tense press conference in Sydney, the chief executive was reminded by a journalist that Optus had been fined $12million in 2024 for the ‘same sort of problem’.
‘I share your frustration. This should not have happened. We’re doing a thorough investigation, I can assure you,’ Mr Rue said.
He said the facts of the outage were still being established.
Mr Rue took up the reins at Optus after erstwhile chief Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigned in 2023.
She presided over the company during a major outage in November 2023, affecting 10million customers, and a data breach scandal in 2022.
During the 2023 outage, hundreds of customers were unable to dial Triple Zero for 16 hours.
CEO Stephen Rue (pictured) said ”I want to offer a sincere apology to all customers who could not connect to emergency services when they needed them most,’ on Friday evening
The Australian communications authority found that the nationwide outage saw more than 2000 people fail to connect to Triple Zero.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) found Optus also failed to conduct 369 welfare checks on those who had attempted to make calls.
‘We don’t manage the Triple Zero system,’ Ms Bayer Rosmarin told a Senate hearing about the outage in 2023.
‘It’s a very complex system that involves all the carriers… We’re still investigating that, and we’re really happy that the ACMA has called an investigation into why this did not work.’
Justin Quill of Thompson Geer Law said that, because Optus’ previous Triple Zero outages had cost the company up to $12million, there could be similar action after this incident.
‘We saw $12million fine in that case. I think that affected 2000 people,’ he told Nine’s A Current Affair.
‘This was less people, only 600 as I understand it, but it’s, if you like, a second offence, only two, two years later, and as part of an upgrade.’
He said that, if Optus is found to have caused the outage, the deaths of three people could hypothetically push a punitive fine ‘much higher’ than $12million.
He also said there could be legal recourse in the form of ‘civil action’ by the families of those who died.
