SYDNEY — Australia’s government pledged on Sunday to bolster resilience in the nation’s telecommunications networks after an outage at Optus, the country’s No. 2 carrier, impacted users in three states and disrupted some emergency services calls, Reuters reported.
The 76-minute technical glitch on Friday affected Optus voice calling in parts of Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory, with some customers experiencing intermittent dropouts, according to Optus.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said no infrastructure is “100% resilient” and that systems must be made “as resilient as we can possibly make them.” Optus, owned by Singapore Telecommunications, apologised Saturday. The centre-left government called the outage “deeply concerning” and said it was being investigated.
The incident follows a prior Optus network failure that left hundreds unable to contact emergency services and resulted in two deaths. In 2024, Optus was fined A$12 million for failing to provide emergency call services during a 2023 nationwide outage.
Sources: Reuters
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