A technical failure in the Optus network led to the deaths of three individuals in South Australia and Western Australia. The outage affected approximately 600 triple zero emergency calls across South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory during a network upgrade on Thursday.

Optus Chief Executive Stephen Rue confirmed the incident, stating that the technical issue resulted in some calls not connecting to emergency services. "I have been advised that in the process of conducting welfare checks, three of the triple zero calls involved households where a person tragically passed away," Rue said during a press conference in Sydney.

Rue expressed his condolences, saying, "I offer my most sincere and heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of the people who passed away - I am so sorry. What has happened is completely unacceptable." He noted that welfare checks were ongoing to ensure the safety of those affected.

The exact duration of the outage is still under investigation, and further details will be released once the internal review is complete. Rue emphasized that the technical problem has since been resolved.

This incident marks another significant outage for Optus. In 2024, the company was fined over $12 million for breaching emergency call regulations during a nationwide outage in November 2023. The Australian Communications and Media Authority found that Optus failed to provide access to emergency services for 2,145 individuals during that incident, which lasted 14 hours.

ACMA Chair Nerida O'Loughlin stated at the time, "Triple zero availability is the most fundamental service telcos must provide to the public. When an emergency call fails to connect, there can be devastating consequences for public health and safety."

The ongoing investigation into the latest outage aims to prevent similar incidents in the future.