A botched software upgrade by telco Optus led to a complete crash of the emergency 000 network across much of Australia last week, allegedly leading to at least three deaths.
The outage struck WA, the Northern Territory and South Australia on Thursday, leaving people unable to reach the emergency service for nearly 14 hours. Multiple customers contacted Optus to alert them of the outage, but its offshore call centre ignored five warnings from the public. The company did not publicly acknowledge the failure for nearly 32 hours, dropping a press release late on Friday evening.
An Adelaide woman reportedly died at home alone with her husband unable to contact triple-0 as a result of the catastrophic Optus outage.
The 68-year-old is believed to have suffered chest pains, contacting her husband who was unable to get onto emergency services due to the outage, according to The Advertiser […]
A WA death has been linked to the deadly triple-0 outage, Optus has confirmed.
In a statement, Optus said on Saturday night that a Western Australian person had died after attempting to call emergency services […]
WA Premier Roger Cook said that WA Police were alerted to the case while conducting welfare checks.
“I am further advised that as a result of WA Police undertaking welfare checks, that there is potentially another case of a Western Australian that has been attempting to call triple-0 and passed away,” he said.
Police have issued a statement that the Optus outage is unlikely to have contributed to the death of a newborn boy in outer Adelaide.
The fatal meltdown stemmed from a botched firewall upgrade in South Australia that began at 12.30am on Thursday. But it was not until 13 hours later at 1.30pm that chief executive Stephen Rue said that Optus was alerted to the “severity of the incident” when a customer contacted the telco.
This is the second such incident in less than two years. In November 2023 a nationwide network outage occurred, during which the company failed to provide access to the emergency call service for 2,145 people.
Somewhat ironically, the latest, deadly, outage was caused by an attempted firewall upgrade, designed to enhance security and prevent cyber attacks. Optus had previously been felled by a large-scale cyber attack in late 2022 that exposed the personal and sensitive data of about 10 million Australians to hackers.
Making the outage more complicated was that normal calls could still be made. Only triple-0 calls were affected. This would have made it difficult to identify a problem until it was too late. Emergency “clamp-on” arrangements that divert triple-0 calls to rival carriers also failed.
“The system upgrade that took place in the early hours of Thursday morning, around 12.30am was a regular upgrade,” Mr Rue said.
“Initial testing and monitoring did not indicate there were any issues with calls connecting normal calls for connecting as they should, and call volumes at a national level did not raise any red flags there was a technical failure in the system. And further, there were no alarms to alert us that some emergency calls were not making it through for emergency services.”
But the TIO has prepared two complaints from customers who called Optus to say they could not call triple-0. Those calls were tragically ignored.
Optus’ litany of failures goes far beyond stuff ups. Even when they lead to deaths, those can at least be attributed to tragic missteps. But Optus has also been accused of deliberately unconscionable behaviour.
More recently, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission sued the telco for unconscionable conduct after it sold products to First Nations people, the disabled, homeless people and even one elderly man with dementia, knowing they could not afford them.
[Communications Minister Anika Wells] said the deadly outage was “incredibly serious and completely unacceptable”.
“The impact of this failure has had tragic consequences and my personal thoughts are with those who have lost a loved one,” she said. “While details are still emerging, no triple-0 outage is acceptable. This outage will be thoroughly investigated. The Australian government accepted all recommendations from the previous Optus outage review and has fully implemented 12 of the 18 recommendations, with the remaining six under way” […]
The Australian Communications and Media Authority criticised Optus following the 2023 outage for failing in its most basic service by leaving its customers unable to piggyback off other telco networks to reach triple-0.
“Triple-0 availability is the most fundamental service telcos must provide to the public,” said ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin when she fined the company in November.
While the telco will rightly have its feet held to the fire, Australians are entitled to ask hard questions of the government that has overseen such a series of catastrophic failures in the emergency system.
