‘Major’ triple-0 outages hit 35 as Coalition says review even more necessary
Australia's communications regulator has revealed 35 major triple-0 outages this year, including the September Optus failure linked to two deaths.
There have been 35 “major” triple-0 outages this year, the communications regulator has revealed, including the Optus outage in September linked to the deaths of two people.
The figures strengthen the case for an independent, whole-of-system review, opposition communications spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh said.
She has been calling for an expanded inquiry since the September outage, in addition to an Australian Communications and Media Authority review into the incident.
The latest figures, published by ACMA in response to Senate estimates questions on notice, said telecommunications companies had reported 35 “major outages” since the start of 2025. After new rules came in, they had also reported 1794 “significant local outages” since June 30.
“The reporting obligations are not limited to outages to networks carrying voice traffic that may have an impact on the carriage of emergency calls. Not all the outages reported have affected voice traffic,” the agency said. Labor, in the wake of the September Optus outage, said it would force telecommunications providers to maintain a public register of the outages from December.
Ms McIntosh said this was not enough in light of the new figures.
“I think it’s alarming, to say the least, and this is why I’ve been calling for a full public register, not something that gets plonked on the website of a telco, but for the government to have ownership over this,” she said.
“To hear there’s been 35 major outages and it would be more than 1700 ‘significant’ [outages] because the requirements only commenced on the 30th of June this year for them to be recorded. This is not good enough. People died during the triple-0 crisis by Optus and the government is not doing everything it can to stop this happening again.”
Ms McIntosh said the September Optus outrage “did shine a light on a major issue”.
“We need to have an independent review into the whole triple-0 ecosystem,” she said.
“We know that some vandals stealing a bit of copper or whatever they want to do can bring down the network for a whole community, thousands of people,” she said, referring to a later outage outside Melbourne where Optus said vandals had taken copper wiring.
“And then we have the telcos ... experiencing more outages than anyone first thought. Australians aren’t even aware of this.”
When contacted for comment, a government spokesman said the Albanese government had “undertaken some of the most significant improvements to the telecommunication industry in history”.
“Our government has already brought in rules that mean telcos must tell people, emergency services and the regulator about outages and we are continuing to increase oversight of the triple-0 service,” the spokesman said.
“We are also investing $1.1bn to improve resilience and increase connectivity for all Australians.”
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