Optus has revealed thousands more people could not connect to triple-0 during last year’s unprecedented network outage than previously thought.
This afternoon the telco announced it had found an additional 2,468 customers who tried to make triple-0 calls from their mobiles that did not connect to emergency services on November 8.
Previously, Optus had only identified 228 customers who failed to get through.
At a Senate inquiry into the outage in November, then-CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said: “We have done welfare checks on all of those 228 calls. Thankfully, everybody is OK.”
The federal government confirmed that Optus had advised the information it previously provided to the Senate, the public and the regulator was “not accurate”.
“This is a deeply concerning development given the critical importance of the Triple Zero service,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said in a statement.
Telcos are required to conduct welfare checks on people who tried and failed to call emergency services during network outages, under regulations introduced in 2019.
However, Optus’s latest statement also says a “welfare check was not undertaken” on the 2,468 new customers discovered.
Optus offers ‘deepest apologies’ to customers
In a statement, Optus said the extra customers who could not call triple-0 were discovered during a review of its processes.
“There is nothing more important to us than the safety and security of our customers, but regrettably on 8 November we did not meet the standards our customers and the community expects from us,” Optus Interim CEO Michael Venter 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.”
Optus said it would update the Senate record and had already provided more information to the regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (the ACMA).
The update comes after documents obtained by the ABC revealed that the telco, the federal government and the telecommunications regulator knew customers were having problems calling triple-0 from their mobiles for hours before the public was informed.
The federal government said a post-incident review into the outage, which is due to report to the government by the end of February, would look at the operating and performance of triple-0.