{"id":156078,"date":"2025-09-20T06:59:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T06:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/156078\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T06:59:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T06:59:07","slug":"optus-network-outage-in-which-three-people-died-lasted-eight-hours-longer-than-telco-initially-said-optus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/156078\/","title":{"rendered":"Optus network outage in which three people died lasted eight hours longer than telco initially said | Optus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Triple-zero calls were out of action for eight hours longer than Optus<\/a> initially claimed after a \u201cbewildering\u201d response to a botched network upgrade during which three people died, authorities have revealed.<\/p>\n

Optus has admitted to the SA government calls were out of action for 10 hours on Thursday while SA police worked through Friday night conducting welfare checks on 150 people whose triple-zero calls failed, the state\u2019s premier, Peter Malinauskas, said on Saturday.<\/p>\n

SA police confirmed an eight-week-old boy from Gawler, on Adelaide\u2019s northern fringe, and a 68-year-old woman from the Adelaide suburb of Queenstown had died during the outage.<\/p>\n

The third death linked to the incident, which involved up to 600 attempted triple-zero calls, occurred in Western Australia \u2013 on Saturday, the state government confirmed the deceased was a 74-year-old man.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is shocking and it is completely unacceptable that people\u2019s lives have been put at risk and of course, with deep sadness I can confirm that one 74-year-old man has passed away,\u201d Labor minister John Carey said at a press conference on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWA police are now making safety checks on the calls that did not get through and they\u2019re working through that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Optus had a duty to inform authorities as quickly as possible \u201cand the fact that didn\u2019t occur until after a press conference on Friday beggars belief\u201d, Malinauskas said.<\/p>\n

Malinauskas said that after the Optus press conference on Friday, SA police were given the details, including names, of the deceased when the premier called Optus chief executive Stephen Rue directly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve got to make sure they\u2019re letting our emergency services know \u2026 all the information the moment they have it, before they think about crafting a media statement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is somewhat extraordinary we had a situation (on Friday) after everything that had unfolded, that we were still struggling to get information from Optus to allow police to do their work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carey echoed the premier\u2019s words on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is unbelievable, and the way that Optus has even just released the news, I think, is appalling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Optus would be \u201cheld to account\u201d and would need to explain why it initially said it was a two-hour outage before admitting it lasted for 10 hours, the premier said.<\/p>\n

SA police commissioner Grant Stevens told the premier on Friday night Optus had only supplied the suburbs where the deaths had occurred.<\/p>\n

\u201cI then called the CEO of Optus and thankfully, it was rectified following that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the lack of information flow from Optus to the South Australian government\u2019s appropriate authorities is somewhat bewildering and it raises a lot of questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federal communications minister Anika Wells said the incident was \u201cincredibly serious and completely unacceptable\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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

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In a press conference on Saturday, Wells said Australians had \u201cevery right to be livid that Optus cannot get these basics right\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cOptus have let Australians down when they needed them most.\u201d<\/p>\n

All telecommunications providers were obliged to ensure they carried emergency service calls and the outage would be thoroughly investigated, Wells said, adding that government would wait until state authorities and communications regulatory bodies had investigated the incident before considering possible consequences for Optus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI offer my most sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the people who passed away,\u201d Rue told reporters on Friday evening.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am so sorry for your loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat has happened is completely unacceptable. We have let you down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The federal opposition\u2019s communications spokesperson, Melissa McIntosh, expressed deep concern the triple-zero camp-on arrangements to divert calls to other carriers had also failed.<\/p>\n

The incident occurred almost two years after more than 10 million Optus customers and businesses were disconnected for more than 16 hours in November 2023.<\/p>\n

People could not call triple zero on landlines, although it was still possible to do so on a mobile.<\/p>\n

The telco was fined more than $12m for breaching emergency call rules during the nationwide outage.<\/p>\n

Rue took over as the company\u2019s chief executive in 2024 from Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, who resigned over the 2023 outage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Triple-zero calls were out of action for eight hours longer than Optus initially claimed after a \u201cbewildering\u201d response…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-156078","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\/156078","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=156078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}