Share and Follow
Key Points
- An Optus triple-zero outage lasted 10 hours, not two as first claimed, and is linked to four deaths.
- The SA premier blasted Optus for delays and poor communication with authorities during the crisis.
- Federal Communications Minister Anika Wells has promised a “full and thorough investigation” into the incident.
It was not yet known if the failed triple-zero calls had a direct impact on the emergencies in which people had died.
‘We take full accountability’
Welfare checks were conducted into Thursday evening and Friday, with delays in the timing “due to the complexity of pulling records from the network”, he said.
Optus CEO Stephen Rue has confirmed an independent investigation would be launched into the outage. Source: AAP / Lukas Coch
The deaths were not confirmed until Friday, he said, while repeatedly defending the decision not to alert the public until a snap press conference that evening as Optus ascertained the facts.
“This information was not surfaced with the relevant escalation at that time.”
‘Beggars belief’
“They’ve got to make sure they’re letting our emergency services know … all the information the moment they have it, before they think about crafting a media statement,” he said.
South Australian Peter Malinauskas said Optus would be “held to account” and would need to explain why it initially said the 10-hour outage had only lasted for two hours. Source: AAP / Hilary Wardaugh
“It is somewhat extraordinary we had a situation (on Friday) after everything that had unfolded, that we were still struggling to get information from Optus to allow police to do their work.”
A thorough, independent examination was needed and “the state government stands ready to do that, but we’ll also wait and see what actions the commonwealth government wants to take about that investigation”, he said.
‘Completely unacceptable’: Wells
‘Camp-on’ mechanisms allow mobile phones to connect to another network to make triple-zero calls if the network through which the call was made fails.
