Rue said the disruption was triggered by a firewall update during a routine network upgrade in the early hours of Thursday morning, about 12.30am.
While normal calls connected, the executive said 600 of its customers were unable to connect with Triple Zero, and that two customers first contacted Optus about 9am on Thursday morning to alert the company to the issue, but that those complaints were not acted upon.
“This information has not surfaced with the relevant escalation at that time,” Rue said. “Early reviews suggest we did not handle these calls as would be expected.”
He said that, crucially, the company had no alarms to detect the failure. “There were no alarms to alert us,” Rue said.
“We became aware of the severity of the incident when a customer contacted us directly at around 1.30pm on Thursday. We were further notified by South Australian police shortly thereafter.” By then, the outage had persisted for more than 13 hours.
Optus then halted the upgrade within minutes and restored access to Triple Zero, he said, but by that time four people had died during the outage.
Rue vowed an external review of “every aspect” of the failure, including the company’s reliance on contractors, monitoring systems and escalation procedures. “Australians can trust that I will always be transparent with them,” he said. “We will not do an internal investigation – there will be a fully independent review.”
When he was asked if he had personally contacted any of the families of those who had died, the chief executive said he had not.
“I haven’t at this stage reached out to the families,” he said. “My focus has been on this. I will, at the right time.”
‘Optus cannot get these basics right’
Earlier on Saturday, Wells said Optus had questions to answer, particularly about why alarms did not go off for the telco when Triple Zero calls from three states were failing.
She said the outage had stretched between 1am and 2pm on Thursday.
“Australians have every right to be livid that Optus cannot get these basics right,” Wells said at a press conference. “Optus have let Australians down when they needed them most.”
Wells said the federal government would wait until state authorities and communications regulatory bodies had completed their investigations before deciding whether to take action against Optus.
‘Bewildering’ lack of information
On Saturday, South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas took issue with what he called a “bewildering” lack of information provided by Optus, as SA emergency services were not told about the two deaths before the company late on Friday afternoon publicly revealed the outage.
“Optus have an obligation … to provide information to authorities about what they know when they know it, regarding the nature of an outage – that seems to be a moving feast,” he said.
Malinauskas said that after the Optus press conference on Friday, South Australia Police was not given the names and addresses of those who died until the premier called Rue directly.
He said state health officials had completed preliminary mental health checks on the family of the eight-week-old boy from Gawler West, north of Adelaide, who died, and would continue to provide support. A 68-year-old woman from the Adelaide suburb of Queenstown also died after calls to Triple Zero were unanswered.
In a statement, SA Police said: “The circumstances of each death, including any impact of the outage, are being investigated, and a report will be prepared for the state coroner in each case.”
The WA Police Force said it had identified the two deaths during welfare checks on people who had tried to call Triple Zero during the outage and failed to connect with the service.
“Throughout the course of these welfare checks, it has been identified two people, a 74-year-old Willetton man, and a 49-year-old Kensington man, have sadly died,” WA Police said in a statement. “In each instance, a report will be prepared for the coroner.”
WA Premier Roger Cook said that what had occurred was “completely unacceptable” and questioned the time it took for Optus to rectify the issue and notify authorities.
“This outage has put lives of Western Australians at risk, and my government will stop at nothing until Optus has fully … and clearly explained what has happened,” he said.
“Let me be clear, Optus must be held accountable for this incident. Unfortunately, the first time my government heard about this was late on Friday afternoon, and since then, we’ve sought urgent briefings and have been advised from several organisations, St John’s, ambulance and police.”
A ‘staggering’ failure
Wells said that during a call with Rue on Saturday morning she stressed to him that the failure was “staggering”, and said it was clear that Optus did not yet know enough about what happened.
She said Optus had clearly failed to implement recommendations from the review of its major 2023 network failure, evidenced by the lack of information given to emergency services and the public during the outage.
An investigation by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) found that during the nationwide 2023 network outage, Optus had failed to provide Triple Zero access for more than 2000 people, and subsequently failed to conduct 369 welfare checks on those who attempted to make emergency calls.
On Saturday, in a statement announcing the fourth death, Rue said: “I am deeply saddened by this further news and extend my heartfelt condolences to the person’s family and friends.”
On Friday, Rue said the outage was “completely unacceptable” and a thorough investigation would occur, but would not say for how long calls to the emergency number failed to go through.
“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.
Telecommunications analyst Paul Budde said Optus would face intense regulatory and political scrutiny, having already been fined $12 million over Triple Zero failures in 2023.
“This second disaster – now with lives lost – will likely trigger a much stronger response from the government and regulators,” Budde said. “Expect tighter rules, larger penalties and possibly even enforced structural changes to how Optus manages its core infrastructure.
“But the bigger picture goes beyond Optus. This tragedy exposes systemic weaknesses in Australia’s telecoms sector. The industry has resisted national roaming and network gateways for decades, prioritising competitive advantage over resilience. Now, with lives at stake, that argument is no longer tenable.”
The government would come under pressure to mandate redundancy and enforce real-time testing of Triple Zero connectivity across all carriers, Budde said.
A 2024 review of the Triple Zero system, known as the Bean review, recommended the establishment of a “Triple Zero custodian” whose sole responsibility was to ensure the system works.
The review also recommended that telcos be forced to share real-time information about outages with emergency services organisations and authorities. The report said there were currently no obligations for telcos to prioritise restoring access to Triple Zero during an outage or to provide information about an outage’s impact on Triple Zero calls to others in the system, government or the public.
“For Optus itself, rebuilding public trust will be a massive challenge. Triple Zero is sacred,” Budde said on Saturday. “Optus will need to show not just apologies but concrete action: transparent audits, redundancy investments, and a willingness to co-operate on national solutions.”
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Carol Bennett, the chief executive of consumer advocacy group Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, said Optus’ failure represented a “double whammy” for the company, given customers couldn’t contact emergency services and weren’t given any information about the outage.
Bennett said a full investigation was needed into whether Optus complied with its Triple Zero obligations.
“Consumer trust in telcos is already at rock bottom, second only to the major supermarkets. This will only erode trust even further,” she said.
“Clearly something has gone wrong. Whether it’s redundancy or another failure, Optus doesn’t seem to know either, and that’s alarming.
“This is just unacceptable and should never happen again. The public needs rapid assurance that the system won’t fail in the next emergency … It’s tragic.”
A November 2023 network meltdown affected about 10 million customers and left thousands unable to get through to Triple Zero emergency services over 16 hours, and a September 2022 data breach was the worst in Australian corporate history.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, the party’s communications spokeswoman, accused Optus of prioritising its bottom line at the expense of the community, and urged the federal government to impose tougher fines on telcos. She argued an overhaul of federal laws governing telco companies might be needed.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young says Optus has put profits over safety.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“For too long, Optus has put profits over safety, and it has now cost people’s lives. It’s simply not good enough,” Hanson-Young said.
“Clearly the $12 million fine last time wasn’t enough to send the message to Optus that safety must come first.”
Optus was the subject of a 2023 inquiry after an outage that year, and Hanson-Young, the chair of the Senate’s environment and communications references committee, said she would ask parliament for another investigation.
“[The] government needs to consider swifter action and an overhaul of these regulations,” she said.
Federal opposition communications spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh said the Coalition would provide the numbers needed in parliament for the government to call a new inquiry, or to increase penalties for telcos.
“The Coalition will stand by the government in whatever needs to occur. It is time for a thorough Commonwealth-led independent investigation,” McIntosh said.
“Whatever review happened in the past was not strong enough because we’re standing here today, on a Saturday, when this incident happened on a Thursday, and we’re all pretty much still in the dark.”
With Rebecca Peppiatt
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