“It isn’t good enough that the minister responsible was swanning around in New York, was absent and appears missing in action on this critical matter,” Ley said.

“We’ve seen a disruption … from Optus’ point of view over the last week with devastating effects. These are really serious deficiencies when they occur,” the minister added.

The spokesperson said Optus has confirmed with police that those affected are “OK”, and the issue has been fixed.

Earlier outage linked to deaths

While normal calls were largely unaffected, the outage blocked around 600 triple-zero calls from connecting to emergency services.

After the 18 September outage, Wells said Optus will be held accountable and has obligations to ensure emergency services calls are prioritised and go through.

“They have perpetuated a failure upon the Australian people with what has happened here. They can expect to suffer significant consequences as a result,” Wells said.

Calls for resignation

Members of the Opposition and the Greens have called for Rue’s resignation, less than a year after he took the reins following the 2023 outage and a hacking incident that left millions of customers exposed to potential online fraud.