Fourth death confirmed after Optus outage blocked calls to triple zero for 13 hours - 9News

Summary

A fourth death has been confirmed by authorities following a technical failure during an Optus network upgrade, which blocked calls to triple zero emergency services in South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory for 13 hours on Thursday. The outage occurred after a botched firewall upgrade began at 12:30 am, and emergency calls were disrupted until about 1:30 pm. During the outage, approximately 600 people were unable to reach emergency services, including a 49-year-old man in Perth who died after being unable to contact triple zero. Optus CEO Stephen Rue announced the outage in a press conference and confirmed a full independent review would be conducted. The incident has drawn strong criticism from state and federal officials, including South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas and Federal Communications Minister Anika Wells, who called the outage unacceptable and vowed a thorough investigation. This is the second major triple-zero outage for Optus in 2023, following a $12 million fine for a similar incident earlier in the year.