Optus admits to a ten-fold jump in the number of Triple-Zero calls that did NOT work during their November ’23 outage

Optus has today revealed that a review of their outage and processes has shown an “additional” 2,468 customers made triple-zero calls from their network that did not reach the Emergency Service Center, and as such, a welfare check was not undertaken following the outage.

Interim Optus CEO Michael 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”

“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 says they will update the Senate record, having earlier said that some 228 calls failed on the day during the Senate hearing into the outage.

ACMA has already been provided with this same information as it investigates Optus’ compliance with the Emergency Service Call Determination obligations.

Optus has appointed a third party to undertake a review of their processes around their welfare check obligations.

This news is a blow to Optus as it tries to lift itself from the slump of last year’s monumental outage.