Australia: Optus suffers another outage, leaving residents without emergency calls
What's the story
Australian telecommunications giant Optus has reported another emergency call outage, this time in an area south of Sydney. The disruption occurred on Sunday morning (local time) due to a faulty mobile phone tower site in Dapto, about 100km from Sydney. The incident affected some 4,500 people and comes just 10 days after a major disruption that may have contributed to four deaths when customers couldn't get timely assistance.
Government response
Optus CEO, Singtel Group CEO to meet Australian minister
The Australian government has been demanding answers from Optus over the recent disruptions. The telco is owned by Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel), whose Group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon is scheduled to meet Australia's Communications Minister Anika Wells this week. The meeting will also be attended by Optus Chairman John Arthur and CEO Stephen Rue.
Service restoration
Emergency call service restored
In light of the recent outage, an Optus spokesperson said, "Optus continues to investigate the cause ... the issue has been restored." The company also confirmed with the police that all callers who attempted to contact emergency services during this time are okay. This comes after a network firewall upgrade caused a 13-hour outage on September 18, disrupting emergency call services in two states and potentially affecting around 600 customers.
Public reaction
Outrage over recent disruptions
The recent outages have sparked outrage in Australia, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese calling the incident "completely unacceptable." Rue has said checks suggested human error might have caused the first outage and admitted procedures weren't followed during it. An independent review is underway and is expected to be completed by year-end.