The blackout began early on September 18 during a routine firewall upgrade. Optus says the outage lasted around 13 hours and affected emergency call routing across South Australia, Western Australia, Northern Territory, and parts of New South Wales.
Approximately 600 calls to Triple-Zero failed, and of 631 initially unsuccessful calls, around 480 were never connected to emergency services.
At first, Optus confirmed three deaths, an eight-week-old infant and a 68-year-old woman in South Australia, and a 74-year-old man in Western Australia. On September 20, a fourth fatality, a 49-year-old man in Perth was also confirmed. Authorities later noted that the infant’s death “was unlikely to have been contributed to by the outage.”
Optus CEO Stephen Rue attributed the failure to human error and procedural deviation, specifically, that “standard processes were not followed” during the firewall upgrade. He acknowledged that two customer complaints, made early in the day to Optus call centres, flagged the triple-zero issue, but were not escalated internally. Police intervention later prompted the upgrade to be halted and reverted.
Singtel’s Group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon described the situation as “deeply sorry,” expressing regret for customers unable to access emergency services when most needed. He confirmed that over A$9.3 billion (approximately) of investment has been channelled into Optus’s network over the past five years, emphasising that Singtel would cooperate fully in investigations.
Optus has appointed Dr Kerry Schott to lead an independent review into the technical failure and operational response. The findings are due by year’s end and will be submitted to the board before public release.
Meanwhile, Australia’s regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), is investigating the outage. Communications Minister Anika Wells called the failure “incredibly serious” and vowed that Optus would be held to account.
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