“Optus have an obligation … to provide information to authorities about what they know when they know it, regarding the nature of an outage – that seems to be a moving feast, including going from two hours to 10 hours,” he said.
Malinauskas said that after the Optus press conference, South Australia Police were not provided the names and addresses of those who died in a timely manner until the premier called Optus chief executive Stephen Rue directly.
State health officials have completed preliminary mental health checks on the family of the eight-week-old boy who died, Malinauskas said, and would continue to provide support.
Rue on Friday said the outage was “completely unacceptable” and a thorough investigation would occur, but would not say for how long calls to the emergency number failed to go through.
“I want to offer a sincere apology to all customers who could not connect to emergency services when they needed them most, and I offer my most sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the people who passed away,” he said.
The telco could face fines of more than $10 million and other legal penalties.
Telecommunications expert Paul Budde.
Optus is expected to hold a second press conference on Saturday afternoon.
Veteran telecommunications analyst Paul Budde said Optus would face intense regulatory and political scrutiny, having already been fined over Triple Zero failures in 2023.
“This second disaster — now with lives lost — will likely trigger a much stronger response from the government and regulators. Expect tighter rules, larger penalties, and possibly even enforced structural changes to how Optus manages its core infrastructure,” Budde told this masthead on Saturday.
“But the bigger picture goes beyond Optus. This tragedy exposes systemic weaknesses in Australia’s telecoms sector. The industry has resisted national roaming and network gateways for decades, prioritising competitive advantage over resilience. Now, with lives at stake, that argument is no longer tenable.”
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The government would come under pressure to mandate redundancy and enforce real-time testing of Triple Zero connectivity across all carriers, Budde said.
A 2024 review of the Triple Zero system, known as the Bean review, recommended the establishment of a “Triple Zero custodian” whose sole responsibility was to ensure the system works.
The review also recommended that telcos be forced to share real-time information about outages with emergency services organisations and authorities. The report said there were currently no obligations for telcos to prioritise restoring access to Triple Zero during an outage or to provide information about an outage’s impact on Triple Zero calls to others in the system, government or the public.
“For Optus itself, rebuilding public trust will be a massive challenge. Triple Zero is sacred,” Budde said on Saturday. “Optus will need to show not just apologies but concrete action: transparent audits, redundancy investments, and a willingness to co-operate on national solutions.”
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Carol Bennett, the chief executive of consumer advocacy group Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, said Optus’ failure represented a “double whammy” for the company given customers couldn’t contact emergency services and weren’t given any information about the outage.
Bennett said a full investigation was needed into whether Optus complied with its Triple Zero obligations.
“Consumer trust in telcos is already at rock bottom, second only to the major supermarkets. This will only erode trust even further,” she said.
“Clearly something has gone wrong. Whether it’s redundancy or another failure, Optus doesn’t seem to know either, and that’s alarming.
“This is just unacceptable and should never happen again. The public needs rapid assurance that the system won’t fail in the next emergency … It’s tragic.”
A November 2023 network meltdown affected about 10 million customers and left thousands unable to get through to Triple Zero emergency services over 16 hours, and a September 2022 data breach was the worst in Australian corporate history.
Last year, the telco was made to pay a $12 million fine by the Australian Communications and Media Authority for breaching emergency call regulations.
An investigation by the authority found that during the nationwide network outage in 2023, Optus failed to provide Triple Zero access for more than 2000 people, and subsequently failed to conduct 369 welfare checks on those who had attempted to make emergency calls.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, the party’s communications spokeswoman, accused Optus of prioritising its bottom line at the expense of the community, and urged the federal government to impose tougher fines on telcos. She argued an overhaul of federal laws governing telco companies might be needed.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young says Optus has put profits over safety.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“For too long, Optus has put profits over safety and it has now cost people’s lives. It’s simply not good enough,” Hanson-Young said.
“Clearly the $12 million fine last time wasn’t enough to send the message to Optus that safety must come first.”
Optus was the subject of a 2023 inquiry after an outage that year, and Hanson-Young, the chair of the Senate’s Environment and Communications References Committee, said she would ask parliament for another investigation.
“[The] government needs to consider swifter action and an overhaul of these regulations,” she said.
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