Optus has suffered another Triple Zero outage, with almost 5,000 customers in the Illawarra region of New South Wales affected on Sunday.
At least nine Triple Zero calls from the Dapto area failed to reach emergency services. This disruption forced one person requiring an ambulance to call on a non-Optus phone, while another chose to forgo emergency assistance due to the outage. In response, NSW Police conducted welfare checks on four other callers and also checked in on another individual who had unsuccessfully attempted to reach emergency services. Additionally, two other callers accidentally dialed Triple Zero during this period.
The issue was traced back to a mobile phone tower in the Dapto area, which affected calls between 3:00 AM and 12:20 PM on Sunday. An Optus spokesperson stated, “We have investigated the impact of the issue and have confirmed with police that all callers who attempted to contact emergency services are okay. We sincerely apologise to any customers who were impacted.”
Optus has yet to identify the cause of the outage.
This latest incident comes as the telecommunications company continues to grapple with the fallout from its catastrophic Triple Zero outage earlier this month. That earlier event affected customers across South Australia and Western Australia and has been linked to three deaths.
Optus is now bracing for a wave of customer losses and long-lasting reputational damage following the outage. Industry insiders warn that the telco’s credibility has been severely damaged and its governance failures exposed.
Chief Executive Stephen Rue has attributed the recent process breakdown to human error by staff in both Australia and India. According to Rue, network engineers did not follow key steps during the upgrade process, steps that had been successfully completed in the past. He stated, “To be very clear: Optus is accountable for the operations of its network.”
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