There will be more outages like Optus’ as tech runs the world

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There will be more outages like Optus’ as tech runs the world

Stephen Bartholomeusz Senior business columnist September 22, 2025 — 11.59am

Technology is now a pervasive part of our everyday lives. We take for granted that it will work, even if we don’t quite understand how it works. And we expect it to work perfectly – until it doesn’t.

Usually, a failure of technology is annoying and frustrating. But occasionally – thankfully rarely – it’s a matter of life or death.

Last week, people died while trying to call Triple Zero for help, with their calls unanswered because their carrier’s network was down after Optus botched what was supposed to be a routine firewall upgrade of its network. What Optus has described as a “technical failure” meant t