Three people have died after triple zero calls were interrupted during an Optus network upgrade on Thursday.
An outage affected emergency calls in South Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia.
‘During the process of conducting welfare checks, three of the triple zero calls involved households where a person tragically passed away,’ Optus Chief Executive Stephen Rue said on Friday.
Two of the people were from SA, the third person was from WA.
The outage has been resolved and an investigation is underway.
‘Our investigation is ongoing, but at this stage I can confirm that 600 customers were potentially impacted, of which a proportion of their calls did not go through,’ Mr Rue said late on Friday.
‘I can confirm that this technical failure has now been rectified. I 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.
Mr Rue said welfare checks were ongoing.
Optus is investigating an outage affecting potentially ‘600’ customers (above, an Optus store in Melbourne)
CEO Stephen Rue (pictured) said ”I want to offer a sincere apology to all customers who could not connect to emergency services when they needed them most,’ on Friday evening
‘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.
‘I am so sorry for your loss.’
One journalist reminded the chief Optus had been fined $12million in 2024 for the ‘same sort of problem’.
‘I share your frustration. This should not have happened. We’re doing a thorough investigation, I can assure you,’ Mr Rue said.
He said the facts of the outage were still being established.
More to come.
