Optus network failure impacts Triple Zero calls

Optus has revealed a network failure impacted its ability to carry Triple Zero calls in three states and territories on Thursday, with at least three deaths linked to the incident.

The telco said the failure occurred during a “network upgrade” and led to "approximately 600 customers" in South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia being unable to get through to emergency services.

Telcos that experience such failures must conduct welfare checks on households that attempted to make a call during the outage.

Optus said that its welfare checks so far uncovered three instances involving “households where a person tragically passed away.”

“These welfare checks are ongoing,” the telco said.

Optus CEO Stephen Rue apologised for the failure and launched an “immediate investigation”.

He said the telco would “share the facts of the incident publicly”.

“I want to offer a sincere apology to all customers who could not connect to emergency services when they needed them most,” Rue said.

“And I offer my most sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the people who passed away. 

“What has happened is completely unacceptable.”

Optus also said it would cooperate with government and regulatory bodies.

Authorities indicated they are in the process of making their own inquiries in relation to the incident.

"SA police is working through around 150 matters in connection with the Optus outage on Thursday September 18," the force said in a brief statement.

"Police are not yet aware of the details of any deaths in SA as a result of the outage.

"The circumstances of any death in SA will be investigated and a report prepared for the State Coroner in due course."

A series of failures and fines

It is the latest in a string of failures involving telcos and their carriage of emergency calls.

Last year, Optus and its subsidiaries were penalised $12 million for Triple Zero call failures during a major outage, and for not performing welfare checks.

Telstra was fined $3 million for a Triple Zero outage that led to 127 calls not being transferred to emergency services.

And some customers of TPG Telecom also temporarily could not connect to emergency services during a decommissioning of an older packet core network.

"Hoped this would not happen again - and yet it has"

ACCAN - the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network - called the "passing of three people" during the Optus outage "an absolute tragedy".

“This serves as a devastating reminder that access to emergency services is absolutely critical," ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett said. "These failures can have tragic consequences.”

Bennett said that after the previous incident involving Optus' carriage of Triple Zero calls, that ACCAN "had hoped this would not happen again - and yet it has.”

"This failure from Optus must not happen again, but frankly, we are beyond tired of saying such things when it comes to this telco," Bennett said.

"It is vital that Australians can have confidence that when they dial Triple Zero, their call will always go through."