Archive · 22 Sep 2025
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.
- When
- Thursday last week.
- Where
- Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia, and New South Wales, Australia.
- Why
- A technical failure and established processes were not followed.
- 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)
