Optus has been blasted by politicians as more details emerge about a tech failure that saw hundreds of triple-zero calls never connected, and three people including a baby boy die. The Optus boss admits they were alerted by a customer on the outage as a fourth death may be linked.

Council of the City of Sydney

A recent Optus network outage has been connected to the deaths of at least three people, including an infant, after emergency triple zero calls failed to go through. The outage, caused by a failed firewall upgrade, left hundreds of customers across three states without access to emergency services for 13 hours.

Authorities at both state and federal levels have launched investigations into the incident, with the telecommunications watchdog reviewing complaints and Optus pledging to improve its alert systems. The outage follows a similar nationwide disruption in 2023, for which Optus was previously fined. Several recommendations from that event had not yet been fully implemented at the time of the latest outage.

Optus slammed over fatal triple-zero outage

Another critical failure of trust when lives were on the line, including an eight-week-old boy from the South Australian town of Gawler. It's a lot of crying and I couldn't even imagine going through that. He died on Thursday after a 5am triple zero call failed to go through. It's awful. I don't even have words to be honest. It seems so horrible. A 68-year-old Adelaide woman and a 74-year-old Perth man also died during the Optus outage. There is potentially another case of a Western Australian that has been attempting to call triple zero and passed away. It's the second such failure for the Telco. In 2023, a nationwide outage disrupted thousands of emergency calls. The communications giant vowed it would never happen again. Australians have every right to be livid that Optus cannot get these basics right. In times of need, Australians expect to be able to pick this up or their landline and call triple zero. Once systems were back online, it took Optus more than 24 hours to come clean. What has happened is completely unacceptable. Today, it was revealed the deadly outage, the result of a botched firewall upgrade that lasted 13 hours. 600 customers across three states without access to triple zero, including Chris Tindall, who was having trouble breathing and called for help. No sound whatsoever. I thought it must have been my phone or I've got two phones. So I used the other one, rang, still no sound. Still, many questions remain unanswered, including why emergency services and state leaders on the ground weren't immediately alerted. And the fact that that didn't occur until after a press conference yesterday beggars belief. Optus chief Stephen Rue this afternoon defended the timing, saying the telco stopped the update as soon as they were alerted to the issue by a customer. But the telecommunications watchdog is now reviewing multiple complaints from as early as 9am. Early review suggests that we have not handled these calls as would be expected. The telco boss has ordered his staff to work on setting up a formal process which would alert all stakeholders in the future. But it's already cost lives. Time will tell what further penalties Optus will be hit with, including the toll on its reputation. When a brand has continual incidents and incidents that appear to be getting worse in their seriousness, it makes it very, very hard to come back. A brand built on yes now facing a resounding no. And Josh Webster joins us live from Adelaide. Josh, we know there are still so many unanswered questions for hundreds of Australians caught up in this. What happens now? Well, Chris, this is very quickly turning into Investigation City with Optus quickly launching an investigation. ACMA, the federal government, South Australian and Western Australian governments all launching their own independent inquiries into the botched upgrade and subsequent deaths. Mental health support has been offered to the victims' families. The last time Optus was in hot water in 2023, the telco was fined $12 million by regulators for failing to provide emergency calls to thousands during a nationwide outage. Now, while 18 recommendations were accepted by the Commonwealth in the wake of that, 12 have already been implemented and the remaining six are still underway. Federal Communications Minister Annika Wells says the latest incident failed several of these implemented recommendations. So, Chris, this is a long way from being over and big fines are expected.

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