Optus is currently investigating potential failures in calls to emergency services, following a service disruption affecting some customers in New South Wales.

The outage, attributed to a break in underground fiber, is disrupting mobile voice and data services in the region.

Authorities in the NSW Hunter area are conducting welfare checks to determine if any calls to emergency services were unsuccessful during the outage.

An Optus representative informed 9News.com.au that their technical teams are actively addressing the fiber break, which is impacting users in “Port Stephens, Maitland, and surrounding areas.”

“Both mobile voice and data services are affected,” the spokesperson confirmed.

“The ability to connect to triple zero may be impacted for some.

“We have alerted emergency services and agencies, emergency call person (Telstra), and relevant government bodies and stakeholders.

“Optus technicians are onsite working to restore services as quickly as possible.

“We apologise to impacted customers and will continue to provide regular updates.”

The telecommunications company told affected customers in an email their team would endeavour to fix the problem in the next five hours.

It is understood customers were notified just after 1.30pm today.

“We’re sorry services are still disrupted by an outage,” Optus said.

”Calls to emergency services are impacted by this outage.

“Optus customers will only be able to call emergency services if they are within coverage of another mobile network or are able to call via wi-fi.”

Three customers who were unable to call the emergency line died.

Some customers have reported issues with accessing Optus services on outage website DownDetector.