Three people died during a Triple Zero network outage that resulted from a network upgrade, Optus chief executive Stephen Rue has said.

The failure on Thursday affected about 600 customers in South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, and three people died, Rue said at a hastily convened press conference at 5.30pm on Friday. Two of the deaths occurred in South Australia and one was in Western Australia.

“Our investigation is ongoing, but at this stage I can confirm that 600 customers were potentially impacted, of which a proportion of their calls did not go through,” Rue said.

“I can confirm that this technical failure has now been rectified. I have been advised that during the process of conducting welfare checks, three of the Triple Zero calls involved households w

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