Optus has admitted almost 2700 calls to triple zero did not go through during last year’s 14-hour outage, far more than the 228 first estimated.
The government has confirmed the information provided in a senate hearing dissecting the November 8 outage was not correct, and that an additional 2,468 customers who tried to make triple-0 calls could not get through, nor were they checked on after.
“This is a deeply concerning development given the critical importance of the Triple Zero service,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said in a statement.
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Former CEO-Kelly Bayer Rosmarin had told the senate inquiry that Optus made sure all customers who were unable to call for help were checked on.
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“We have done welfare checks on all of those 228 calls. Thankfully, everybody is OK,” she said.
Interim CEO Michael Venter has apologised after the revelation today that the number was 10 times higher, and that not everyone was accounted for or checked on.
“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,” Venter said.
“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,” 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.”
Venter is standing in as CEO as the company decides who will replaced Bayer Rosmarin in the top role. She was also at the helm of the telco during the 2022 data breach and fell on her sword shortly after the outage. Bayer Rosmarin was criticised for her approach in the fallout.
There were financial hits for Aussies who lost a day’s work, for business owners who couldn’t take payments, and general inconvenience as people couldn’t make calls, use public transport, or access key call centres.
That’s on top of the far more concerning impacts, like people in life-or-death situations not being able to contact triple-0 and hospitals being cut off from communication,
Mobile phone customers with “SOS” showing on their devices could get on to another network in the case of an emergency, but landlines could not.
A review into the outage will be handed to the government by the end of February.
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