Optus admits four people died during tech failure disruption of triple-0 calls

Optus, the second largest Australian mobile network, admitted that four people have died during the company’s network outage on Thursday that lasted 13 hours.

A network upgrade at Optus resulted in a technical failure that affected its triple-0 calls across South Australia, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia, according to CEO Stephen Rue. He further confirmed that approximately 600 customers were potentially impacted.

“I have been advised that during the process of conducting welfare checks, three of the triple-0 calls involved households where a person tragically passed away,” Rue told a press conference.

The dead people have been identified as an eight-week-old boy, a 68-year-old woman, and a 74-year-old man, according to media reports. Rue announced the fourth death on Saturday afternoon.

Rue offered condolences to the people who passed away and apologized to those who were not able to receive urgent medical help when needed.

"I promise that we will fully cooperate with any and all investigations in relation to this," Rue added.

The investigation will look into the duration of the outage, as well as why it only affected triple-0 calls.

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The incident comes just two years after another major nationwide outage in 2023 affected Optus operations, leaving people unable to contact emergency services for more than 16 hours. This resulted in a hefty fine of more than $12m for breaching emergency call rules and led to the resignation of then-CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin.

And earlier in August, an Australian regulator sued Optus for allegedly breaching privacy laws during a 2022 cyberattack, which had 9.5 million affected customers. The court could potentially impose fines of up to A$2.2 million per breach.