Australian telco Optus is under intense scrutiny following a major technical failure that left parts of the country unable to access Triple Zero (000) emergency services, resulting in at least three deaths. CEO Stephen Rue issued a public apology on 21 September 2025 and announced a suite of measures to address what he described as “unacceptable” errors.
The fault occurred during a routine firewall upgrade on 18 September. While regular calls remained unaffected, the upgrade appears to have disrupted the special emergency call routing used by Triple Zero in several states and territories: South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and parts of New South Wales that were routed via affected towers. Approximately 600 households were impacted.
Rue confirmed that three people—an eight-week-old baby, a 68-year-old woman in South Australia, and an individual in Western Australia—were found during post-incident welfare checks after being unable to reach emergency services when they needed to. Investigations are ongoing to determine whether the outage contributed directly to the deaths.
Rue admitted that established processes were not followed during the upgrade, and that some customer reports to the Optus contact centre about being unable to connect to Triple Zero were not properly escalated. He said previous warnings from customers went unheeded, and that the company lacked internal alarm signals or monitoring capacity specific to emergency call failures.
In his statement, Rue offered a “sincere apology” to those who suffered, including the families of the deceased, and acknowledged that Optus had failed to live up to its duty of care. He described the failure as a “technical failure … not acceptable.”
To prevent similar incidents, Optus is implementing several changes. An independent external review will be conducted to establish how protocol was breached and where internal oversight failed. A compulsory escalation process for reports of any future Triple Zero failures through Optus’ customer service channels will be put in place. Technical teams will begin real-time monitoring of failure rates and call volumes by state, specifically for emergency numbers, to deliver faster detection and response.
Government officials have responded sharply. South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas criticised Optus for a delay in communicating with authorities, calling the failure “unprecedented incompetence” and “completely unacceptable.” Federal Communications Minister Anika Wells described the outage as “incredibly serious” and affirmed that regulatory consequences will be explored once investigations conclude.
Rue defended that it was not yet possible to say whether the deaths were caused by the failure, and pledged full cooperation with state and federal regulators in establishing all facts. Optus will also conduct welfare checks, review call centre logs, and publicly share findings of the independent investigation.
The incident has triggered urgent debate over reliability, accountability, and infrastructure resilience in Australia’s telecommunications industry, especially for emergency service access. Many now call for stronger oversight, clearer redundancy protocols, and better communication between telcos and government agencies during emergencies.
