On 11 September, telecom operator Optus suffered a 76-minute technical glitch that impacted network users across three Australian states. Customers in Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia experienced “intermittent call dropouts”, according to Optus’ statement.
Communications Minister Anika Wells addressed Friday’s outage in a televised address on Sunday: “No piece of infrastructure be it roads, bridges, poles, wires, is 100% resilient.”
“What we need to do is make sure these systems are as resilient as we can possibly make them.”
The outage comes almost exactly a year after Optus’ last widescale disruption, which prevented callers from connecting to the emergency services number (“000”) for up to 15 hours. The glitch occurred during a network firewall update and was linked to the deaths of four people.
A national outage on Optus’ network in 2023 also disrupted calls to emergency services. For this, Optus received a penalty from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) of over A$12 million (US$7.9 million) in 2024.
In 2022, a cyberattack on Optus impacted the data of approximately 9.5 million Australians.
In the aftermath of last year’s incident, Optus CEO Stephen Rue said that the “immediate corrective actions” had been put in place to strengthen the network’s resilience. Optus conducted a consultation process in February that reflected on the 2025 outage and triggered a company-wide restructure, leading to layoffs and role changes.
Following last week’s outage, the Australian government has now stepped in. Chris Bowen, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, called the disruption “deeply concerning”. He added that “all the necessary investigations have begun.”
“It’s an obligation on our telecommunications companies to keep all their technology for triple-0 calls in the best possible working order.”
Victoria’s police force completed around 40 welfare checks for callers unable to connect to 000 on Friday. A police spokesperson confirmed that “there were no adverse outcomes or issues of note.”
Source: https://capacityglobal.com/news/australia-govt-responds-optus-outage/
