A technical failure during a network upgrade last week disrupted Triple Zero calls, leading to four deaths.
Earlier this week, the Federal Court fined the telco $100 million for selling products to vulnerable customers who couldn’t afford them.
In recent years, the company has seen another widespread outage blocking access to Triple Zero, and a major cyberattack that led to a data breach.
Tech failure
On Thursday last week, Optus had a “technical failure” during a network upgrade.
The company said no “red flags” were raised during initial testing of the changes, but later received a direct complaint from a person who had been unable to make a Triple Zero call.
Calls in South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory were impacted.
In a statement on Friday, Optus said three Triple Zero calls had failed to go through, leading to three deaths.
CEO Stephen Rue told media on Wednesday four people had died who “could not reach emergency services in their time of need.”
SA Police are investigating two deaths during the outage.
Rue said the company took “full accountability,” and had appointed an independent investigator.
Human error
On Wednesday, Rue told media the outage was a “process issue” that was “a result of human error, in terms of instructions provided”.
He said the upgrade program was supposed to happen over two nights. On the first night, the proper steps involved in “past successful upgrades... were not followed.”
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Calls were meant to be diverted to a different part of the network not currently being upgraded. This did not happen.
Response
Communications Minister Anika Wells told the ABC on Thursday: “It is incredibly disappointing that we are here so soon after Optus’ last failure in this space.”
In November 2023, Optus experienced a network-wide outage, leaving millions of people without phone reception and internet. It said the outage was caused by a “routine software upgrade.”
During that outage, almost 2,700 people tried and failed to call Triple Zero.
Court case
On Wednesday, the Federal Court fined Optus $100 million forselling products to hundreds of vulnerable customers, including people with mental disabilities, who could not afford them.
The lawsuit was launched by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) last year.
Optus admitted it had targeted vulnerable Australians, and in some cases incentivised staff to complete these purchases through commission-based rewards.
Federal Court Justice John O’Sullivan said the company’s conduct was “clearly unconscionable and canonly be described as appalling”.
He found the penalty, proposed by the ACCC, was “appropriate”.
O’Sullivan noted that Optus’ conduct meant “many vulnerable consumers suffered financial hardship [and] shame, stress and emotional distress.”
In a statement, Optus said it was “remediating impacted customers,” and working to change its practices.
The company is facing a separate class action over a 2022 data breach.
