Three people dead in Optus Triple Zero outage

Three people died during a Triple Zero network outage that was the result of a network upgrade, Optus chief executive Stephen Rue has announced at a last-minute press conference.

The failure affected some 600 customers in South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, Rue said, and three people died during that period on Thursday. Two of the deaths occurred in South Australia, and one was in Western Australia.

Rue joined Optus after previous chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigned after presiding over a mass outage and a data breach.Credit:

“Our investigation is ongoing, but at this stage I can confirm that 600 customers were potentially impacted, of which a proportion of their calls did not go through,” Rue told journalists in a last-minute press conference late on Friday.

“I can confirm that this technical failure has now been rectified. I have been advised that during the process of conducting welfare checks, three of the triple zero calls involved households where a person tragically passed away.

“Please know that these welfare checks are ongoing. I want to offer a sincere apology to all
customers who could not connect to emergency services when they needed them most, and I offer my most sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the people who passed away.

“I am so sorry for your loss.”

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Optus will face widespread scrutiny over the incident, its first under new chief executive Stephen Rue, who joined Optus after previous chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigned after a mass outage and a data breach.

A November 2023 network meltdown affected some 10 million customers and left hundreds of customers unable to get through to triple zero emergency services over a 16-hour period, while a September 2022 data breach was the worst in Australian corporate history.

Last year, the telco was made to pay a $12 million fine by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) for breaching emergency call regulations.

An ACMA investigation found that during the nationwide network outage in 2023, Optus failed to provide Triple Zero access for more than 2000 people and subsequently failed to conduct 369 welfare checks on those who attempted to make emergency calls.

“We don’t manage the Triple Zero system,” then-CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin told a Senate hearing in 2023. “It’s a very complex system that involves all the carriers ... We’re still investigating that, and we’re really happy that the ACMA has called an investigation into why this did not work.”

More to come.

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