Australia’s second-largest telecom provider, Optus, said Saturday it would cooperate with official investigations after a technical failure disrupted emergency call services for 13 hours, resulting in three deaths.
Authorities identified the victims as an eight-week-old boy and a 68-year-old woman in South Australia, and a 74-year-old man in Western Australia. The outage occurred during a firewall upgrade from 12:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. local time on Thursday, potentially affecting around 600 customers across South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory. Optus has conducted welfare checks on those affected and referred cases with no contact to police, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.
CEO Stephen Rue apologized for the incident, promising full cooperation with investigations. The Australian government called the outage “completely unacceptable” and vowed to examine the company’s failures. Optus, owned by Singapore Telecommunications, has faced prior crises, including a 2022 cyberattack affecting 9.5 million Australians and a 2023 network outage that led to a A$12 million fine and the resignation of its former CEO.
Rue, who became CEO in November 2024, said the fault has been fixed, a full investigation is underway, and the findings will be made public.
