Three individuals have died following a technical failure that affected emergency calls on the Optus network, according to the company's CEO. Stephen Rue stated that the failure disrupted triple-0 emergency calls in South Australia, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia. The issue arose during a network update.

Rue confirmed that two of the fatalities occurred in South Australia, while the third was in Western Australia. "Our investigation is ongoing but at this stage I can confirm that approximately 600 customers were potentially impacted, of which a proportion of their calls did not go through," he said.

He added, "During the process of conducting welfare checks, three of the 000 calls involved households where a person tragically passed away." Rue assured that the technical failure has been resolved.

"I want to offer a sincere apology to all customers who could not connect to emergency services when they needed them most," he stated. "I am so sorry for your loss. What has happened is completely unacceptable. We have let you down."

Rue clarified that while normal calls were functioning in those regions, the triple-0 service was specifically affected. "You have my assurance that we are conducting a thorough investigation and once concluded, we will share the facts of the incident publicly," he said.

He also committed to cooperating fully and transparently with all relevant government agencies and regulatory bodies during the investigation.

This incident follows a previous outage in November last year, which resulted in over $12 million in penalties for Optus. During that outage, more than 2,100 customers were unable to reach triple-0, and an investigation by the Australian Communications and Media Authority found that the company failed to conduct over 300 welfare checks on those who attempted to make emergency calls.