Dozens of Triple Zero calls are believed to have been impacted by an Optus network outage across several Australian states and territories, just months after a major Telstra failure caused widespread disruption.
Optus confirmed its latest outage lasted for just over an hour on Friday afternoon, affecting customers across parts of Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.
Police are now carrying out welfare checks after more than 39 callers experienced difficulties connecting to the emergency service during the outage.
The incident is the latest to raise concerns about the reliability of Australia’s telecommunications networks and access to Triple Zero during major disruptions.
Both Optus and Telstra have suffered serious network outages over the past 18 months that have left hundreds of Australians struggling to contact emergency services.
In July, trust in Telstra was rocked after a widespread national outage disrupted transport networks, businesses, health services and emergency calls.
The failure affected a network powering about 25 million Australian mobile services and marked Telstra’s third major national outage in less than a year.
A critical software fault was blamed for the disruption, which halted train lines and caused business transactions to time out.
The outage also forced Telstra to conduct 639 welfare checks on people who had attempted to call Triple Zero, with seven requiring assistance after initially failing to get through.
Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady apologised following the outage and vowed to determine what went wrong.
“We will complete our investigation into the actions needed to prevent it from happening again. You have my commitment on that,” she said.
Communications Minister Anika Wells also pledged to “hold Telstra’s feet to the fire”, arguing the company’s response to the disruption had not been good enough.
The July failure came less than a year after a major Optus network outage lasting almost 14 hours left hundreds of people unable to reach Triple Zero and was linked to two deaths.
The repeated failures have increased scrutiny on how Australia’s major telcos handle emergency calls when their networks go down.
Telcos have since issued fresh advice explaining what Australians should do if they cannot connect to Triple Zero during a network outage.
If a phone attempts to make an emergency call using its own mobile network but cannot connect, the device should automatically try to use another available network.
If the first call fails, users are being urged to try again and remain on the line for up to a minute while their phone searches for an alternative network.
This may result in silence on the line while the device attempts to establish a connection.
The Federal Government has also strengthened regulatory powers following previous Triple Zero failures, with telcos facing greater scrutiny and potential civil penalties over their handling of emergency services.
Telecommunications experts have argued the repeated outages highlight broader problems with Australia’s regulatory framework.
RMIT telecommunications expert Mark Gregory previously called for Australia’s telecommunications laws to be rebuilt “structurally from the ground up and in tune with the modern era”.
“We need to start again,” he said.
“We’ve seen piecemeal changes being made to the telecommunications legislation and to the regulations.
“What we need to do is to rebuild the Telecommunications Act, the legislation and the regulations, and to make them fit for purpose.”
