Dozens of Triple Zero calls failed to connect during Friday network disruption

Dozens of Triple Zero calls struggled to connect to the Telstra national emergency line because of an Optus outage on Friday, Triple Zero Victoria says.

Victoria Police said it was completing welfare checks on impacted callers following the outage on Friday afternoon.

“Just before 7pm, Optus has provided details of 39 calls that experienced difficulty connecting to the Telstra national Triple Zero (000) Emergency Call Person,” Triple Zero Victoria chief operations officer Paul Santamaria said.

Earlier on Friday, Optus confirmed it became aware of an outage at “approximately 1.30pm AEST and immediately mobilised technical teams and restored services as quickly as possible”.

Optus confirmed later in the evening that the outage lasted for one hour and 16 minutes, affecting some customers in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory.

The telco said that a network issue resulted in intermittent call dropouts, adding that it referred around 40 calls to Victoria Police for welfare checks.

“We are still determining whether calls were able to connect to a different network and this will be established in coming days,” an Optus spokesperson said.

The Tasmanian Department of Police, Fire and Emergency Management said Optus had advised it of an outage that affected three Triple Zero calls in Tasmania.

“Police subsequently contacted the callers, and it was determined they did not require immediate police or emergency services,” the department said.

Some Optus customers took to social media earlier in the day, stating they had lost service or were unable to make or receive calls.

Optus sent a text message to customers saying that in Victoria, South Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania “Optus has loss of coverage due to this outage”.

“Emergency service calls can be accessed where other mobile provider coverage is available or are able to call via Wi-Fi.”

In July, Australia’s communications regulator sued Optus over last year’s Triple Zero outage, alleging the telco failed to connect emergency calls on 1005 occasions and exposing it to penalties of more than $500 million.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority filed civil penalty proceedings in the Federal Court against Optus Mobile over the September 18 outage, when a bungled firewall upgrade blocked calls to Triple Zero across South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Far West NSW for about 13 hours. The outage was linked to two deaths.

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