Australia to overhaul comms after Optus emergency call failure linked to four deaths

Australia on Monday foreshadowed changes to its telecommunications industry after Optus, the country’s second-largest carrier, failed to connect emergency calls last week, a shortcoming linked to four deaths.

Optus said the outage caused 624 emergency calls to 000 to fail to connect on Thursday, with failures reported in the Northern Territory and in Western Australia, South Australia and New South Wales. The four deaths occurred in Perth and Adelaide: a 74-year-old man and a 49-year-old man died in Perth, Western Australia, and a 68-year-old woman and an 8-week-old boy died in Adelaide, South Australia. South Australia Police said the outage was unlikely to have contributed to the boy’s death since his grandmother immediately used another phone to call an ambulance after her Optus phone failed.

In a statement, Communications Minister Anika Wells said the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the industry watchdog, was investigating what went wrong and that Optus and all telecommunications providers have obligations under Australian law to ensure emergency calls go through. The department said the regulator would pursue actions if rules were broken, and Wells emphasized that Optus would be held accountable and that there could be consequences for Telstra and the broader sector.

Stephen Rue, chief executive of Optus, apologized for the outage and said early investigations indicated that established processes were not followed.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he expected Optus to consider replacing the company’s chief executive and that there would be a thorough investigation. He spoke to ABC from New York City, where he was attending the United Nations General Assembly.

The episode has intensified calls for reforms as regulators examine how emergency services calls are routed and how quickly failures are detected and remediated. Optus has previously faced penalties for failing to meet emergency-call obligations during outages: the company was fined more than AU$12 million for a disruption on Nov. 8, 2023, and Telstra was fined AU$3 million in December last year for a disruption at its 000 call center. Industry officials say the government’s planned review could prompt changes to the regulatory framework governing emergency communications, with ACMA leading investigations and broader policy considerations anticipated in the coming months.