It was only the next day, at 2:47pm on Friday that police were told of another 123 WA calls that failed to connect, at the same time as Optus issued a public alert.<\/p>\n
It was only through subsequent checks that police discovered the second WA death.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe WA Police Force received an email highlighting that the scale had increased, that there were those additional welfare checks to be conducted,\u201d Cdr Pearson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat happened simultaneously to that notification going out to government and to the media.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cdr Pearson said: \u201cOur heartfelt sympathy does go out to those families. Losing somebody in any circumstance is obviously tragic. We will be speaking to the families as part of the coronial investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
All remaining welfare checks have now been complete, with 147 other callers in WA confirmed safe, though Cdr Pearson couldn\u2019t guarantee that there were no other adverse outcomes.<\/p>\n
She said outages should be reported to emergency services \u201cwhen the outage is occurring\u201d, so the public can be warned to use an alternative carrier.<\/p>\n
Acting Premier Rita Saffioti branded the delay a \u201cterrible\u201d failure by the telco.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s clear there were protocols that were meant to be put in place by Optus that were not put in place,\u201d she said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was shocked to find out exactly the extent of that failure. These things should not happen and my sincere condolences go out to the two families.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Acting](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/f5a6c03ce55318dd637490fe7eb058dd601311f2.jpg\")
Camera IconActing Premier Rita Saffioti at a press conference on Sunday. Credit: Jessica Page<\/p>\n
Ms Saffioti noted that the previous chief executive resigned in 2023, after another technical failure that resulted in a $12 million fine.<\/p>\n
She stopped short of calling for current chief executive Stephen Rue\u2019s resignation today, but Federal Minister Matt Keogh implied that public opinion should weigh heavily on his future.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce bitten twice shy, this has happened again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat customers decide to do will probably also have an impact on how the board decides to review this . . . certainly, I\u2019d very much understand if customers decided to go elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
The State Government baulked, though, at fresh Opposition calls for Optus to be stripped of naming rights, as Optus Stadium prepared to host the WAFL grand final on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The 10-year deal worth an estimated $50 million is due to run out in 2027.<\/p>\n
Ms Saffioti, who is also Sport and Recreation Minister, did not rule the drastic move in or out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a focus at the moment,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur focus is really understanding what transpired.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WA Police have revealed the full extent of the deadly delay in Optus failing to notify emergency services…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,1158,84,7239,105,8056,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-159469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-police","tag-politics","tag-state-politics","tag-technology","tag-telecommunications","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159469","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=159469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}