Newborn among the three dead after Optus triple zero failure impacted hundreds of calls

Three people died during an Optus outage yesterday, which impacted hundreds of triple zero calls across South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Two of the deaths took place in SA and another in WA, Optus chief executive Stephen Rue said in a snap press conference on Friday evening.

SA Police say they've identified the two people in their state, with a newborn among the dead.

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"The deaths involved an eight-week-old boy from Gawler West and, a 68-year-old woman from Queenstown," a statement said.

"The circumstances of each death, including any impact of the outage, are being investigated and a report will be prepared for the State Coroner in each case."

Rue said the technical failure was the result of a network update issue and affected 600 triple zero calls on the network.

Welfare checks were then conducted across today to all affected households after the issue was fixed, he added.

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From those welfare checks it was established that three of the calls came from households where people passed away.

"Our investigation is ongoing but at this stage I can confirm that approximately 600 customers were potentially impacted, of which a portion of calls did not go through," he said.

He apologised to the families of those who passed away.

"I am so sorry for your loss What has happened is completely unacceptable. We have let you down. You have my assurance that we are conducting a thorough investigation.

"This should not have happened."

Minister for Communications, Anika Wells, labelled the incident "serious and completely unacceptable", vowing to "thoroughly investigate" the outage.

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"This is incredibly serious and completely unacceptable," Wells said in a statement.

"The impact of this failure has had tragic consequences and my personal thoughts are with those who have lost a loved one."

Wells added that "all telecommunication providers have obligations to ensure they carry emergency services calls".

Shadow Minister for Communications, Melissa McIntosh, said the failure was "deeply concerning".

"Whilst Optus is still undertaking an investigation as to how this occurred, I am very concerned the emergency camp-on arrangements that should have been in place also failed," she said.

"There must be a full and thorough investigation into this incident, to establish how and why and most importantly – ensure this never happens again".

Emergency services camp-on arrangements are designed to allow triple zero calls to be made even if one phone carrier has no network coverage in the area, by using another mobile network's services instead.

Optus could face fines of more than $10 million and could be liable for other penalties.

It's not the first time Optus has had a major outage.

Optus was last year ordered to pay more than $12 million for breaches of emergency call rules in November 2023 following an investigation by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

The ACMA found Optus failed to provide access to the emergency call service for 2145 people during the course of the 14-hour outage on November 8, 2023.

It said Optus then failed to conduct 369 welfare checks on people who had tried to make an emergency call during the outage.

At the time the fine was issued, ACMA Chair Nerida O'Loughlin said significant penalty reflected the critical nature of the breaches.

"Triple zero availability is the most fundamental service telcos must provide to the public. When an emergency call fails to connect there can be devastating consequences for public health and safety," she said.

Wells said the Australian Government had "accepted all recommendations from the previous Optus Outage Review and has fully implemented 12 of the 18 recommendations", with the remaining six recommendations still underway.

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