Optus outage: Almost 2700 customers couldn’t call triple-0, internal reviews finds

More than 10 times the original number of Optus customers reported were unable to reach emergency services amid a national outage in November last year.

Almost 2700 customers were unable to reach emergency services during the Optus outage in November last year, the beleaguered telco has finally revealed.

The number is more than 10 times the number former chief executive Kelly Bayer-Rosmarin told a Senate inquiry into the incident last year, when she said the number was 228.

It marks the latest in a series of clarifications and bungled communications into the shutdown, which ultimately cost Ms Bayer-Rosmarin her job.

The nation’s second largest telco on Tuesday confirmed while its 10.2 million customers were offline and unable to make calls or send text messages, an additional 2468 customers were not able to reach emergency services, despite initiatives in place which should have allowed customers to piggyback off of other networks.

It is an update Communications Minister Michelle Rowland described as “deeply concerning”, adding the government expects contact and welfare checks on customers who were left in the dark will occur “expeditiously”.

“This is a deeply concerning development given the critical importance of the triple-0 service,” she said.

“This new information will be considered by the ACMA as part of its independent investigation into Optus’ compliance with the Telecommunications (Emergency Call Provider) Determination 2019.”

Interim chief executive Michael Venter apologised for the circumstances, and said Optus would write to each individual customer who could not reach emergency services to offer further assistance.

Optus interim CEO Michael Venter.

“We know we let our customers down and our entire team is committed to addressing all learnings from the outage,” he said.

Optus is yet to reveal the exact reason why its customers were unable to reach emergency services via methods which piggyback off of other networks amid an outage.

However Telstra, which operates triple-0 Emergency Service Answer Points around the country, has confirmed its services ran without fault during the Optus outage.

In a submission to an inquiry into the Optus Network Outage, Telstra said all calls “successfully delivered” to the triple-0 emergency call answer points amid the outage were answered.

“We do not have visibility of Optus customer experiences related to their ability to place successful triple-0 calls. However, we did answer some emergency calls from Optus customers during the outage, both via the emergency call camp-on mechanism and from their fixed and mobile networks,” the submission read.

Ms Bayer Rosmarin confirmed during the senate inquiry into the outage Optus had no plan to combat a catastrophic nationwide outage, and she too was in the dark on the exact extent of the crisis for more than 3½ hours after the network collapse.

One week after Ms Bayer Rosmarin faced a senate grilling she left the company, a move which left even those in her team in shock.

Optus in a statement said it would provide its findings on customer calls to emergency services to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, which is investigating the telco’s responses and communication with customers amid the outage. It would also update the senate record.

The telco said it would also appoint a third party to review its processes for welfare checks.