Australian Telecommunications Failure Leads to Three Deaths

(MENAFN) Optus, Australia's second-largest telecommunications provider, issued a formal apology on Friday after a major network outage led to the deaths of three customers. The incident, which occurred on Thursday, severely disrupted calls to the country's emergency services, specifically affecting calls to Triple Zero.

The issue arose during a routine network update, which caused a failure in emergency communications for hundreds of customers across several states. In a statement, Optus confirmed that around 600 people in Western Australia (WA), South Australia (SA), and the Northern Territory (NT) were impacted by the outage.

Optus CEO Stephen Rue expressed deep regret over the incident during a press briefing in Sydney, revealing that, during welfare checks on those affected, three of the Triple Zero calls involved households where individuals tragically passed away.

"During the process of conducting welfare checks, three of the Triple Zero calls involved households where a person tragically passed away," Rue said, adding that two of the deaths occurred in South Australia and one in Western Australia.

Rue confirmed that the technical issue has now been resolved, and assured the public that Optus would fully cooperate with all relevant government and regulatory bodies in their investigations.

The latest incident follows a previous major outage in November 2023, for which Optus was fined more than 12 million Australian dollars (approximately 7.93 million U.S. dollars) after 2,145 customers were unable to reach emergency services.

Optus has yet to comment on whether this outage will result in further regulatory scrutiny.

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