Emergency calls fail in fresh Optus triple-zero outage

Optus has apologised for a 2nd triple-zero outage successful arsenic galore weeks, arsenic section executives hole for showdown talks with the embattled telco’s owners.

The latest contented is linked to a mobile telephone tower successful NSW that affected 4500 users successful the Dapto country connected Sunday betwixt 3am and 12.20pm.

A reappraisal by the telco has identified 9 failed calls to triple zero, but Optus says those affected “are OK” and the contented has been rectified.

One of those callers required an ambulance and used different telephone to interaction exigency services.

Another was trying to telephone exigency services but couldn’t get done and had made accidental calls.

The nonaccomplishment is the 2nd clip successful little than a fortnight a large Optus outage has prevented radical accessing exigency services.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher described the repetition incidental arsenic different discouraging motion of Optus dropping the ball.

“It’s still disappointing and, though I understand Optus did marque the indispensable reports implicit the weekend, there’s intelligibly much work to beryllium done,” she told ABC News Breakfast connected Monday.

“There’s questions that Optus are going to person to reply astir what happened successful the past fortnight, and their effect to it.”

However, she maintained that Australians should person religion successful the triple-zero communications system.

“We’ve seen a disruption … from Optus’ constituent of view implicit the past week with devastating effects. These are truly superior deficiencies when they occur,” the curate added.

The incidents person alarmed some Australians and Communications Minister Anika Wells, who has requested discussions with representatives from genitor institution Singtel, who she says will visit Australia this week.

NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman said lives whitethorn person been enactment astatine hazard successful the Sunday outage and called for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to intervene.

“We’ve already seen radical dice and today we perceive of much triple-zero failures successful the Illawarra … the errors are mounting,” helium said, calling connected the premier curate and NSW premier to request assurances it will not hap again.

A scheduled firewall upgrade successful South Australia triggered a communications outage connected September 18 linked to the deaths of three Australians.

Optus main enforcement Stephen Rue blamed quality mistake for that fault.

Normal calls were mostly unaffected, but the outage blocked astir 600 triple-zero calls from connecting to exigency services.

It affected customers successful South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and NSW.

Source: AAP