Australian officials have promised telecommunications giant Optus will face significant consequences over a systems outage linked to multiple deaths.
The incident last week left hundreds of people across more than half of the country unable to call emergency services for 13 hours.
Optus - one of the country's two major providers - says at least three people died as a result, and its chief executive has apologized to their families and the public for the completely unacceptable failure.
The company is under fire for its delayed handling of the incident - the second such outage for the firm in two years - and the nation's communications regulator is investigating.
More than 600 calls to emergency services failed last Thursday, primarily coming from South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory. At least two calls to triple-0 made from south-western New South Wales also did not connect.
However, Optus waited 40 hours to inform the public about the incident, and also did not tell regulators until the issue was resolved - counter to standard practice, the Australian Media and Communications Authority (Acma) says.
In a press conference, Optus boss Stephen Rue blamed the outage on a technical fault identified during a network upgrade.
He confirmed that welfare checks conducted after services were restored found that three individuals had died, including a baby boy, although police indicated the network failure was unlikely to be a cause in that specific case. Authorities in Western Australia also suspect a fourth death was linked to a failed call to triple-0.
Rue mentioned that multiple customers had tried to report the network issue, but their complaints were not handled appropriately. I would like to reiterate how sorry I am about the very sad loss of the lives of four people who could not reach emergency services in their time of need, he stated.
Acma expressed being deeply concerned by the situation and its handling, ensuring that Australians must be able to contact emergency services whenever they need help. The regulator previously found Optus failed to provide access to emergency services for 2,145 people during an earlier outage in 2023, leading to penalties exceeding A$12 million.
Communications Minister Anika Wells emphasized that telecommunications providers have no excuse for failings in triple-0 calls. She conveyed her disappointment over the recurrence of such incidents and noted that Optus had perpetuated an enormous failure on the Australian people and would face significant consequences.
