Optus is facing criticism from South Australia's premier for failing to provide crucial information to police regarding deaths linked to a recent outage that affected emergency calls. Premier Peter Malinauskas expressed disbelief that the telecommunications company did not disclose the names, addresses, or phone numbers of individuals who died until he personally contacted the CEO after a media conference.

On Friday night, South Australia Police confirmed they had identified two deaths in the state, including that of an eight-week-old baby, which were acknowledged by Optus. A third death related to the outage occurred in Western Australia.

Malinauskas stated, "The lack of information flow from Optus to the South Australian government's appropriate authorities is somewhat bewildering and it raises a lot of questions." He noted that emergency services were actively seeking details about the incidents following the press conference.

He added, "Optus informed South Australian police the names of the suburbs where those two deaths had occurred but did not tell South Australian police the names, addresses and the phone numbers regarding those two deaths. The fact that that [information flow] didn't occur until after a press conference yesterday beggars belief."

The premier also mentioned that he had discussed Optus's shortcomings with Communications Minister Anika Wells, emphasizing the company's failure to ensure the reliability of the triple-zero emergency service. Initially, Optus indicated that the outage lasted approximately two hours, but it was later revealed to have lasted over ten hours, according to information received from the company.