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Adelaide mother Simone Porcaro is lucky she was with her young daughter when the unthinkable happened last week.
Her husband was “in and out of consciousness” at home, and her calls to emergency services weren’t going through.
“Obviously, my husband needed an ambulance, so I called twice. There was nothing … no dial tone, no phone call or anything,” she told 10 News.
“Then my daughter, who’s seven, suggested using her dad’s phone.”
After rolling him over and using his thumb to unlock the phone, Porcaro was able to get through to triple-zero.
More than 26 hours later, Optus gave her a call to see if she needed assistance.
“I said, ‘We are already at the hospital. I don’t need this, but I needed it then.'”
Porcaro says she feels lucky that she was able to get through to emergency services — but it was only because her husband has a different phone provider than she does.
“It just makes me angry because I should be able to call triple-zero.
“We had another phone in the household, but it’s not every day that my husband and I are home at the same time.”
After being with Optus for more than 15 years, she’s now considering changing providers.
“I’m definitely thinking about switching. I’ve been with Optus for more than 15 years, so I stuck by them after the last outage,” she said.
“I’ve already Googled this morning for other telcos I can look into.”
‘Significant consequences’
While Optus may lose goodwill with customers like Porcaro, it’s also facing “significant consequences”.
Communications Minister Anika Wells addressed the media on Monday morning, saying Optus will be “held accountable for this failure”.
“They have perpetuated a failure upon the Australian people with what has happened here. They can expect to suffer significant consequences as a result,” she said.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said on Monday the Australian Communications and Media Authority has launched an investigation into the Optus network outage. Source: AAP / Mick Tsikas
The telco industry’s regulator has launched an investigation into the network outage, and could impose financial penalties on Optus, although criminal charges cannot be laid under current legislation.
Optus CEO Stephen Rue said: “Approximately 600 customers were potentially impacted, of which a proportion of their calls did not go through.
“I have been advised that during the process of conducting welfare checks, three of the triple-zero calls involved households where a person tragically passed away,” he said at a press conference on Friday afternoon.
Two of the deceased were from South Australia and one from Western Australia, Rue confirmed.
“I offer my sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the people who passed away. I am so sorry for your loss. What has happened is completely unacceptable. We have let you down.”
