Australia’s Optus apologises for outage that disrupted emergency calls

On September 12, Optus, Australia's second-largest telecommunications provider, issued an apology after a 76-minute technical glitch disrupted voice calling services and some emergency calls across Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory. The outage affected users' ability to make or receive calls and led to intermittent call dropouts. Optus stated, "We sincerely apologise to customers for the disruption."

This incident follows a similar outage in 2023 that left hundreds of people unable to contact police, fire, and ambulance services, resulting in two deaths. Chris Bowen, a senior minister in the center-left government, expressed deep concern over the recent outage, emphasizing the obligation on telecommunications companies to maintain the best possible working order for triple-0 calls.

Police in Victoria completed around 40 welfare checks on callers affected by the outage, but they reported no adverse outcomes or issues of note. In 2024, Optus, owned by Singapore telecom company Singtel, was fined A$12 million (US$8.6 million) for failing to provide emergency call services during a nationwide outage in 2023. Additionally, the company faced a cyberattack in 2022 that compromised the data of about 9.5 million Australians.