{"id":154216,"date":"2025-09-19T11:16:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T11:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/154216\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T11:16:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T11:16:09","slug":"three-people-died-when-optus-network-upgrade-affected-triple-zero-calls-ceo-confirms-optus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/154216\/","title":{"rendered":"Three people died when Optus network upgrade affected triple zero calls, CEO confirms | Optus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three people died after an Optus<\/a> network upgrade prevented triple zero calls in three states and territories on Thursday, the telco\u2019s chief executive officer has confirmed.<\/p>\n

Two of the deceased were in South Australia and one was in Western Australia<\/a>, Stephen Rue said, but added that welfare checks after the upgrade were \u201congoing\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe upgrade impact \u2026 resulted in the failure of a number of triple zero calls in South Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia,\u201d Rue said in a press conference on Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CEO said about 600 customers were affected by the network upgrade, and that Optus was conducting a thorough investigation.<\/p>\n

He said normal calls were going through at that time but triple zero calls were affected. The exact duration of the outage was also being investigated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will cooperate fully and transparently with all relevant government agencies and regulatory bodies while we investigate this matter further,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rue repeatedly apologised, describing the \u201ctechnical failure\u201d as \u201cnot acceptable\u201d and something that \u201cshould not have happened\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI offer my most sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the people who passed away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am so sorry for your loss. What has happened is completely unacceptable. We have let you down.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the facts of the outage would be shared when they were established.<\/p>\n

Rue said it was particularly frustrating the outage occurred less than two years after a similar failure.<\/p>\n

In November 2023, a routine software upgrade to the network resulted in more than 2,000 people being unable to make triple zero calls.<\/p>\n

The Australian Communications and Media Authority fined the network $12m last year for the incident, which breached emergency call rules.<\/p>\n

Rue said the investigation into Thursday\u2019s outage would look into why the emergency calls were not handed over to another network.<\/p>\n

He did not answer questions about whether the latest outage reflected poorly on him, given it occurred under his watch.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday is not about me, this is about the people who lost their lives,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The network could face fines of more than $10m and other legal penalties.<\/p>\n

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Anika Wells, the minister for communications, said the government had accepted all the recommendations of the review into the previous Optus outage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is incredibly serious and completely unacceptable. The impact of this failure has had tragic consequences and my personal thoughts are with those who have lost a loved one,\u201d she said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile details are still emerging, no triple zero outage is acceptable. Optus and all telecommunication providers have obligations to ensure they carry emergency services calls.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement, WA police said there was a \u201cnational protocol in place for triple zero outages\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere an outage has disrupted a triple zero call, the carrier will attempt to make contact with the caller as soon as possible,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere that follow-up contact is not achieved, the carrier must contact police, who then conduct a welfare check on the caller.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statement continued that WA police were, as of Friday evening, in the process of conducting a number of welfare checks and would be notifying the relevant emergency service for their response.<\/p>\n

South Australian police also issued a statement, confirming it was \u201cworking through around 150 matters in connection with the Optus outage on Thursday 18 September\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolice are not yet aware of the details of any deaths in SA as a result of the outage,\u201d the statement read.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe circumstances of any death in SA will be investigated and a report prepared for the state coroner in due course.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three people died after an Optus network upgrade prevented triple zero calls in three states and territories on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-154216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}