Optus Outage Disrupts Dozens of Triple Zero Calls

An Optus network outage affecting Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory disrupted dozens of Triple Zero emergency calls and lasted roughly an hour. At least 39 callers in Victoria and three in Tasmania experienced connection problems, prompting police welfare checks; authorities said those contacted did not require immediate assistance. Optus said a technical fault affecting voice calls was identified and repaired, while advising that emergency calls may connect through another carrier’s network or Wi-Fi when available. The incident has renewed concerns about Australia’s telecommunications resilience, following major Optus and Telstra outages that also affected emergency access. Optus is separately facing potential penalties exceeding $500 million over an earlier failure that allegedly blocked 1,005 emergency calls.