Australia is reeling after a catastrophic Optus outage cut hundreds of Triple Zero (000) emergency calls, resulting in three deaths—including an eight-week-old baby—across South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory.
Optus CEO Stephen Rue revealed in a snap press conference on Friday that a technical fault during a network update disrupted emergency calls, leaving critical regions without access to life-saving services.
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas condemned the telecom giant, calling its handling “unprecedented incompetence”:
“South Australian police didn’t know. SAS ambulance services didn’t know. My office didn’t know. Yet they chose to go public without informing authorities first. I’ve never seen worse communication from an Australian corporation.”
Western Australia Premier Roger Cook also blasted the company, describing the failure as “completely unacceptable.” Emergency service operators confirmed they only learned of the outage during Optus’s 5:45 p.m. press conference.
Federal Communications Minister Anika Wells said, “Optus has let Australians down when they needed them most. No Triple Zero outage is acceptable, and this will be thoroughly investigated. The impact has been tragic, and my thoughts are with the families.”
The company had previously been fined $12 million in 2023 for a similar outage that left 2,000 Australians unable to reach emergency services. At the time, Optus vowed such an event would “never happen again.”
Tech analyst Trevor Long called this failure “a more fundamental breakdown than the previous one,” noting that while regular calls still worked, the Triple Zero subsystem failed completely.
The disaster has ignited a nationwide debate about telecommunications reliability and emergency preparedness. Optus now faces intense political scrutiny, potential legal repercussions, and an urgent review of its emergency call systems.
