Optus outage NSW: Another triple-0 failure for telco, with customers unable to call emergency services

Optus has revealed another blockage to emergency triple-0 calls for thousands of customers, following a catastrophic failure by the telco.

The latest issue is linked to a mobile phone tower in NSW that affected 4500 users in the Dapto area on Sunday between 3am and 12.20pm.

A review by the telco has identified nine failed calls to triple 0, but Optus says those affected “are OK” and the issue has been rectified.

“We have investigated the impact of the issue on calls made between 3am and 12.20pm yesterday, including calls made to the Triple Zero network, and have confirmed with police, all callers who attempted to contact emergency services are OK,” an Optus spokesperson said.

One of those callers required an ambulance and used another phone to contact emergency services.

Another was trying to call emergency services but couldn’t get through, and have now confirmed they are doing fine.

“Optus continues to investigate the cause of an issue involving a mobile phone tower site in the Dapto area in NSW. The issue has been restored,” the statement read.

“We sincerely apologise to any customers who were impacted.”

NSW Premier Chris Minns said the outage was “clearly unacceptable” and welcomed the Federal Government and ACMA’s investigations into the telco.

“NSW deserves full and transparent information from Optus about what went wrong yesterday, including when emergency services and the Telco Authority were notified,” he said.

“Our emergency services have worked tirelessly to check on the welfare of those affected by this outage, and that work will continue today.”

The failure is the second time in less than a fortnight a major Optus outage has prevented people accessing emergency services.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher described the repeat incident as another discouraging sign of Optus dropping the ball.

“It’s still disappointing and, although I understand Optus did make the necessary reports over the weekend, there’s clearly more work to be done,” she told ABC News Breakfast on Monday.

“There’s questions that Optus are going to have to answer about what happened in the last fortnight, and their response to it.”

However, she maintained that Australians should have faith in the triple-0 communications system.

“We’ve seen a disruption ... from Optus’ point of view over the last week with devastating effects. These are really serious deficiencies when they occur,” the minister added.

The incidents have alarmed both Australians and Communications Minister Anika Wells, who has requested discussions with representatives from parent company Singtel, who she says will visit Australia this week.

NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman said lives may have been put at risk in the Sunday outage and called for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to intervene.

“We’ve already seen people die and today we hear of more triple-0 failures in the Illawarra ... the errors are mounting,” he said, calling on the prime minister and NSW premier to demand assurances it will not happen again.

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

Optus chief executive Stephen Rue blamed human error for that fault.

Normal calls were largely unaffected, but the outage blocked about 600 triple-0 calls from connecting to emergency services.

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