New Optus outage disrupts emergency calls ahead of Singtel visit
The latest issue is ‘totally unrelated’ to previous triple-zero incident, and is a different type of outage, says parent company of Australian telco
OPTUS suffered another outage on Sunday (Sep 28) that disrupted emergency calls, just as a delegation from parent company Singtel visits Australia this week to meet Communications Minister Anika Wells over the fallout from earlier disruptions.
A spokesperson said Optus is still investigating the cause of a now-restored issue involving a mobile phone tower site in the Dapto area of New South Wales.
The issue affected around 4,500 customers and calls made between 3 am and 12.20 pm, including some emergency calls. Dapto is about 97 km south of Sydney.
Optus has “confirmed with police, (that) all callers who attempted to contact emergency services are OK”, added the spokesperson.
One person who required emergency services was impacted, but was able to connect to the services from another phone, noted Optus in a later statement.
Singtel said in a statement that the latest issue was “totally unrelated to (the previous) triple-zero incident. It is a different type of outage, which was limited to one cell site out of 3,140 in New South Wales”.
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“Given the heightened sensitivity in Australia around triple-zero calls, Optus communicated this incident to demonstrate full transparency of a type of outage that carriers around the world routinely encounter,” Singtel added. “This incident did not arise from any upgrade or maintenance action being conducted.”
Still, the snafu is the latest in a series of network issues that have outraged Australians. It has also become a reputational crisis for Australia’s second-biggest phone company, which accounts for half of parent Singtel’s revenue.
Singtel group chief executive Yuen Kuan Moon will attend this week’s meeting with Wells in Sydney, alongside Optus CEO Stephen Rue and chairman John Arthur.
A Sep 18 Optus network outage prevented customers from calling emergency services, resulting in the deaths of four people and a warning that Optus likely faces major financial penalties.
The blunder came less than two years after a similar incident affecting millions of customers led to a A$12 million (S$10.2 million) fine and cost the job of Rue’s predecessor, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin. BLOOMBERG
