Optus has revealed 2,697 customers were unable to contact emergency services through 000 on the day of its catastrophic outage on November 8 – almost 10 times higher than originally stated.
Optus revealed in a media statement that there were an additional 2,468 customers who were unable to connect to emergency services during the outage.
This is on top of the 229 customers that Optus thought were the only customers affected on the day.
Kelly Bayer-Rosmarin, the former Optus CEO, told a Senate inquiry that there were only 228 failed 000 calls by Optus customers on the day of the outage. It was later revealed this number was 229.
During the inquiry Ms Bayer Rosmarin said: “We’ve done welfare checks on all of those 228 calls. Thankfully everybody is OK.”
Optus learned of the higher number of affected customers as it undertook a review of the events of November 8 and the processes for calls that were unable to connect to 000.
The embattled telco says it will update the Senate record as well as providing these latest findings to ACMA (Australian Communication and Media Authority).
ACMA is currently investigating Optus’s compliance under the Emergency Service Call Determination.
Optus says it will be appointing a third party to conduct their own investigation of the outage and to review the existing processes.
This same third party will also be supporting the Optus welfare check obligations which has grown by 2,468 customers.
“Optus will continue to cooperate with ongoing investigations by the Government, the Senate Committee and the ACMA into the outage,” the company said in a statement.
“Optus will also appoint an independent third party to undertake a review of our processes supporting our welfare check obligations.
“We will commit to implement any recommendations of this independent review and share the findings with the ACMA and the Senate Committee.”
Optus Interim CEO Michael Venter said nothing more important to the company than the safety and security of our customers.
“Regrettably on 8 November we did not meet the standards our customers and the community expects from us,” he said.
“I offer my deepest apologies to all those customers who were unable to access Triple Zero services during the outage and did not receive a follow-up check from us.
“We are writing to each customer individually to apologise for this and provide the opportunity to discuss their specific circumstances and whether there is anything we can do to assist them further.
“We know we let our customers down and our entire team is committed to addressing all learnings from the outage.’’