Optus—Optus network outage blocked Triple Zero emergency calls for 14 hours, linked to two deaths; ACMA sued in Federal Court
A September 18, 2025 Optus network outage, triggered by a botched routine network upgrade, left customers unable to reach Australia's Triple Zero (000) emergency call service for roughly 14 hours; about 75% of 605 Triple Zero call attempts failed during the outage, which was linked to two deaths. A review commissioned by Optus and led by Kerry Schott (released December 2025) found as many as ten compounding mistakes by Optus and contractor Nokia, plus poor risk management, internal audit, and customer/stakeholder communication. On July 30, 2026, Australia's communications regulator ACMA filed Federal Court proceedings against Optus Mobile Pty Limited alleging 1,005 separate occasions on which it failed to provide access to the emergency call service, breaching the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999 and the Telecommunications (Emergency Call Service) Determination 2019. Optus subsidiaries had already paid over A$12 million in ACMA infringement notices after a similar November 2023 Triple Zero failure.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consumer Protection | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Infrastructure Accountability | -against | secondary | -0.50 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.443 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (critical ×2) × confidence (0.59)× agency (negligent ×0.5)
Evidence (1 signal)
ACMA sues Optus Mobile in Federal Court over September 2025 Triple Zero outage linked to two deaths
ACMA announced July 30, 2026 Federal Court proceedings against Optus Mobile alleging 1,005 separate failures to provide Triple Zero emergency call access during a 14-hour September 18, 2025 outage; roughly 75% of 605 emergency call attempts failed, and the outage was linked to two deaths. A Kerry Schott-led review found compounding technical and governance failures by Optus and contractor Nokia.