Multiple people were left unable to contact triple zero after another Optus outage, this time in New South Wales over the weekend.
An Optus spokesperson said there had been “an issue involving a mobile phone tower site” in the Dapto region. The outage affected calls between 3 a.m. and 12:20 p.m. yesterday, including nine calls to the emergency hotline.
Optus confirmed that all people who attempted to contact triple zero during the outage were “okay.” Several of the emergency calls were accidental or test calls. Approximately 4,500 people were affected by the outage, but services have since been restored, according to the Optus spokesperson.
This weekend’s outage comes just days after a major Optus outage earlier this month, which has been linked to multiple deaths. During that incident, hundreds of emergency phone callers were left unconnected across multiple states.
Optus chief executive Stephen Rue blamed the earlier outage on human error, explaining that a firewall upgrade had been botched. “Preliminary investigations have determined that on the first night of the upgrade, the steps taken on past successful upgrades of a similar nature were not followed,” he said last week. “On this occasion of the upgrade of 18 September, the first step in the process was not followed.”
Communications Minister Anika Wells has warned of “consequences” for the telco giant, but no specific penalties have yet been handed down.
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https://www.9news.com.au/national/optus-outage-dapto-nsw-triple-zero-calls-affected/a5503bf6-3386-4350-8274-90052c2ca5da
