1 year ago
Optus Emergency Call Failure Leads to Four Deaths
Imagine trying to call for help but your phone won't connect to 911 (or in Australia, 0-0-0).
That happened to some people using Optus, an Australian phone company.
Because of this, four people died.
The government is very concerned and Optus’s CEO has apologized.
An investigation is happening to find out what went wrong.
This has happened before to Optus, and to other companies, which resulted in fines.
The government is planning to make changes to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
Optus’s emergency call service failure led to four deaths.
624 emergency calls failed to connect.
The failure occurred in multiple Australian states and territories.
Optus CEO Stephen Rue apologized for the failure.
Government and regulatory bodies are investigating the outage.
- Who
- Optus, an Australian telecommunications company.
- What
- A technical failure that prevented 624 emergency calls from connecting, leading to four deaths.
- Where
- Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia, and New South Wales, Australia.
- When
- Thursday last week.
- Why
- A technical failure and established processes were not followed.
Key facts
- Company
- Optus
- CEO
- Stephen Rue
- Issue
- Emergency call outage
- Deaths
- Four
- Calls Failed
- 624
- Location
- Australia (NT, WA, SA, NSW)
- Fine
- AUD 12 million (Optus - prior incident)
- Fine
- AUD 3 million (Telstra - prior incident)
Quotes
Anika Wells
Communications Minister
“We're going to be concerned about our response, but there will be consequences for Telstra and the broader telecommunications sector.”
telegraphindia.com
“Optus and all telecommunications providers have obligations under Australian law to make sure emergency services calls go through.”
telegraphindia.com
Anthony Albanese
Prime Minister
“There will be a thorough investigation of this.”
telegraphindia.com
“Quite clearly, Optus' behaviour is completely unacceptable.”
telegraphindia.com
Stephen Rue
Chief executive of Optus
“I want to reiterate how sorry I am about the very sad loss of the lives of four people, who could not reach emergency services in their time of need.”
telegraphindia.com
“Early investigations show that it appears that established processes were not followed”
telegraphindia.com
Sources
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