{"id":265538,"date":"2025-11-06T02:06:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T02:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/265538\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T02:06:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T02:06:08","slug":"latest-optus-outage-sparks-call-for-probe-into-triple-0-ecosystem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/265538\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Optus outage sparks call for probe into ‘triple-0 ecosystem’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Optus says welfare checks have confirmed no adverse outcomes for more than a dozen customers who called triple-0 during an outage in the Hunter region yesterday.<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of customers lost service to the network after fibre lines were cut at a telecommunications tower in Hexham, just north of Newcastle.<\/p>\n

New South Wales police are investigating the incident, which resulted in 34,000 Optus customers across 15 postcodes losing mobile phone and data services.<\/p>\n

The incident comes as Optus is the subject of a Senate inquiry,<\/a> following an outage in September, which resulted in the deaths of three people who could not get through to emergency services.<\/p>\n

The Shadow Minister for Telecommunications, Melissa McIntosh, has told ABC Newcastle Breakfast’s Paul Culliver<\/a> she wanted an independent investigation into the “triple-0 ecosystem” and its infrastructure.<\/p>\n

“If vandals can damage infrastructure that results in people not being able to call triple-0 service, it raises alarm bells,” she said.<\/p>\n

“What protections are in place?\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This just shows once again this issue is not over.”<\/p>\n

Apology for the disruption<\/p>\n

In a statement, an Optus spokesperson said welfare checks had been carried out on the13 customers who tried to call triple-0 during the outage, and none required further assistance.<\/p>\n

“We sincerely apologise to our customers for the disruption,” the statement read.<\/p>\n

Optus said eight of the calls were referred to NSW Police, which confirmed “no adverse outcomes”.<\/p>\n

It said one of the callers needed an ambulance but was “able to reach triple-0 another way”.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Optus has apologised for the disruption. (Supplied: OPtus)<\/p>\n

The Australian Telecommunications Alliance CEO, Luke Coleman, said the impact of the vandalism could have been catastrophic for Optus customers.<\/p>\n

“It appears somebody has gone into a pit to cut those fibre lines,” he said.<\/p>\n

“This puts people’s lives at risk.<\/p>\n

“When fibre lines are cut it means mobile towers cannot connect back into the network.”<\/p>\n

\"optus<\/p>\n

Optus experienced an outage that affected customers in parts of the NSW Hunter region. (AAP:\u00a0Bianca De Marchi)<\/p>\n

Mr Coleman said some calls could have been diverted to another network, depending on coverage in the affected areas.<\/p>\n

“If there’s a strong signal from another carrier, your phone will connect to that network for the triple-0 call,” he said.<\/p>\n

Optus said diverting calls to the Telstra network during the outage had been a success.<\/p>\n

The ABC has reached out to the Federal Telecommunications Minister, Anika Wells, for a response.<\/p>\n

Optus has declined the ABC’s request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Optus says welfare checks have confirmed no adverse outcomes for more than a dozen customers who called triple-0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,155216,123798,155212,155214,155215,155213,103542,16157],"class_list":{"0":"post-265538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-data-outage-hunter","12":"tag-emergency-calls","13":"tag-hexham-tower-vandalism","14":"tag-hunter-optus","15":"tag-hunter-outage","16":"tag-optus-customers","17":"tag-optus-outage","18":"tag-triple-0"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265538","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=265538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}