The federal government has warned Optus will face major financial penalties after a network outage last week prevented people from making triple zero calls, an incident linked to three deaths across South Australia and Western Australia. Communications Minister Anika Wells stated the telco has 'no excuses here' and will 'suffer significant consequences'.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) revealed it was not informed of the outage until hours after it was resolved, and that Optus provided 'inaccurate' information. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the company's behavior 'completely unacceptable' and said action would be taken.
Optus CEO Stephen Rue admitted on Friday that a network upgrade affected up to 600 households in South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and parts of New South Wales. Welfare checks later confirmed two deaths in South Australia and one in Perth during the failure. An eight-week-old boy initially linked to the outage is now believed by police to have died from unrelated causes.
Wells criticized Optus for both the failure and its handling of the crisis, noting the company emailed her department on Thursday afternoon about 10 affected calls but did not update until Friday afternoon, when the number grew to 600. Acma chair Nerida O'Loughlin said the authority was not notified until after the outage was resolved, despite requirements for immediate notification.
O'Loughlin confirmed Acma's investigation will examine whether Optus properly informed customers and complied with federal requirements for emergency call connectivity. She expressed disappointment at the recurrence of such failures less than two years after a previous breach. Wells suggested Optus had not effectively implemented recommendations from an earlier independent investigation into triple zero outages.
Prime Minister Albanese, speaking in New York, said he would be 'surprised' if Rue was not considering his position as CEO. Rue stated that Optus has since implemented compulsory escalation processes for triple zero outages, but acknowledged the company was unaware of the problem until a customer reported it at about 1:30pm on Thursday. The network update was cancelled, and triple zero access was restored after 13 hours.
