Sydney, Sep 22 (UNI) Australian officials have promised telecommunications giant Optus will face “significant consequences” over a systems outage linked to multiple deaths.
The incident last week left hundreds of people across more than half of the country unable to call emergency services for 13 hours, reports BBC.
Optus – one of the country’s two major providers – says at least three people died as a result, and its chief executive has apologised to their families and the public for the “completely unacceptable” failure.
The company is under fire for its delayed handling of the incident – the second such outage for the firm in two years – and the nation’s communications regulator is investigating.
More than 600 calls to emergency services failed last Thursday, primarily coming from South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. At least two calls to triple-0 made from south-western New South Wales also did not connect.
However Optus waited 40 hours to inform the public about the incident, and also did not tell regulators until the issue was resolved – counter to standard practice, the Australian Media and Communications Authority (Acma) said.
In a press conference on Friday last, Optus boss Stephen Rue blamed the outage on a technical fault identified during a network upgrade.
He said welfare checks conducted after services were restored confirmed three people had died, including a baby boy, though police have since said the network failure was “unlikely” to be a cause in that case.
Authorities in WA also say they believe a fourth person died after their call to triple-0 failed.
In a series of updates over the weekend, Rue said the company was unaware of the incident for 13 hours.
Multiple customers had tried to advise the company its network wasn’t working, but the complaints weren’t escalated or handled “as would be expected”, he added.
Communications Minister Anika Wells on Monday said telecommunications providers had “no excuse” for triple-0 call failures and that she had spoken to Rue – who the prime minister says should considering resigning.
The company had “perpetuated an enormous failure on the Australian people” and would face “significant consequences”, she added.
