Australia's Optus suffers emergency call outage, says vandals cut fibre

SYDNEY: Australian telco Optus said on Wednesday (Nov 26) morning it had suffered an emergency call outage near Melbourne, impacting around 14,000 users, two months after a broader disruption that probably caused four deaths when customers failed to get timely aid.

The outage is believed to have been caused by vandals trying to steal copper.

Optus, owned by Singtel, said an "aerial fibre break" could be the cause of the outage, which was being investigated.

"Customers will only be able to call emergency services if they are within coverage of another mobile network or are able to call via WiFi," the company said on its website.

Optus spokesperson Jane McNamara told ABC Radio Melbourne that the telco believes that no calls to emergency services were disrupted.

"We do have photo evidence, very clear, that there has been a cut made," she said, adding: "We know copper has been removed from the pit and we have contacted Victoria Police."

EMERGENCY CALLS DISRUPTED

The September incident, which resulted in fatalities, occurred after emergency call services were disrupted due to a technical failure during a network upgrade, Optus' CEO Stephen Rue had said.

A deviation from standard procedures during a network firewall upgrade triggered the 13-hour outage in Australia, Optus said after the incident. The Australian government said it would investigate the "unacceptable" failure, and the company said it would cooperate with any effort to look into the incident.

This comes less than a year after Optus was fined A$12 million (US$7.7 million) by regulators for failing to provide emergency call services to thousands during a nationwide outage in 2023.

Optus also suffered a cyberattack in 2022 that affected the data of up to 10 million Australians.

Former CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigned in the wake of the earlier incidents, and Rue took over in November 2024.

Singtel launched a successful takeover bid for Optus in 2001, making the latter a wholly owned subsidiary of the Singapore telco.

Singtel's Group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon had said he was "deeply sorry" to learn about the incident that led to the deaths in September. 

He said at the time that Singtel is working with the Optus board and management to ensure a "thorough investigation" to prevent any recurrence.