Australia: Emergency call problems with provider Optus again
There's no peace at Australia's second-largest provider. While a massive failure of the emergency call service is still investigated, new problems have emerged.
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The Australian provider Optus once again experienced hours of problems with emergency calls on the weekend, less than two weeks after an almost nationwide outage was linked to four deaths. However, the new outage was now very localized, writes the news channel ABC. According to Optus, around 4,500 people were affected when a mobile phone tower failed. According to the report, 12 attempts were made to reach the emergency call center during the outage. However, this time there were no serious consequences for the failure to reach the emergency call center. In one case, the emergency call center could be reached with another telephone. Nevertheless, the rather minor disruption is likely to increase the pressure on the provider even further.
Optus is Australia's second-largest mobile phone provider and has attracted attention several times in recent years with sometimes massive issues. In November 2023, a software upgrade caused a massive outage of internet connections, affecting more than ten million people. On 18 September, an upgrade to the Optus network caused the number 000 (“Triple Zero”), which is reserved for emergency calls, to stop working in several states. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that this was not noticed for half a day; only a customer tip-off made the seriousness of the situation clear. Four people for whom the emergency call was not answered during this time subsequently died.
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The much smaller incident on the weekend has now occurred in the state of New South Wales; according to Optus, there was an issue at a mobile phone tower near the city of Wollongong. According to the ABC, the local health minister has described the incident as “very worrying.” One failed emergency call is one too many. There was also renewed criticism from the German government. The telecommunications regulator has announced that it will investigate the incident separately. A consumer protection organization also pointed out that in the event of an outage, other providers should actually take over the emergency calls and called for an investigation into why this did not work here.
(mho)
