Optus, a telecommunications provider wholly owned by Singapore-based Singtel, is facing intensified scrutiny after its second emergency call outage in less than two weeks, raising fresh concerns about the resilience of Australia’s communications infrastructure.
The latest disruption occurred on Sunday, 28 September, when a fault at a mobile phone tower in Dapto, around 95 kilometres south of Sydney, prevented at least nine calls to emergency services (Triple Zero) from connecting. The outage lasted more than nine hours, affecting approximately 4,500 customers.
In a statement released on Monday, 29 September, Optus confirmed that calls made between 3am and 12.20pm were impacted, including those to Triple Zero. The company said it had “confirmed with police, all callers who attempted to contact emergency services are OK,” and issued an apology to affected users.
Among the disrupted calls was a request for an ambulance, which had to be made from a second phone. Another caller was unable to reach Triple Zero and had no access to an alternative device. Optus stated that two of the failed calls were made in error.
This outage follows a far more severe incident on 18 September, which disrupted emergency calls for over 600 customers in South Australia, Western Australia, New South Wales, and the Northern Territory.
That event, caused by human error during a firewall update, has been linked to at least three deaths and has triggered investigations by both Optus and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, speaking to ABC News, labelled the most recent outage “disappointing,” adding, “There’re questions that Optus is going to have to answer about what happened in the last fortnight and their response to it.”
Communications Minister Anika Wells is expected to meet this week with senior representatives from Optus and Singtel in Sydney to discuss the recent failures. Attendees will include Singtel Group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon, Optus CEO Stephen Rue, and Chairman John Arthur.
Yuen apologised last week for the earlier outage, stating: “We are deeply sorry to learn about the network incident at our Optus subsidiary that has impacted triple zero calls… We are working with the Optus board and management to ensure a thorough investigation of this incident to prevent any future recurrence.”
The Dapto incident adds to a growing list of setbacks for Optus, which was recently fined A$66 million for selling unnecessary products to vulnerable consumers between 2019 and 2023. That fine came less than a year after Optus was penalised A$12 million in 2024 for a separate network failure in November 2023 that blocked over 2,000 emergency calls.
The 18 September outage, which lasted more than 10 hours, drew nationwide criticism and renewed demands for regulatory reform. Optus has since launched an independent review to determine why emergency calls were not successfully rerouted.
Shadow Communications Minister Melissa McIntosh has called for a broader investigation, telling ABC News that “people across Australia need to have confidence in our Triple Zero network.” She added, “It’s not just about Optus. If NBN is also experiencing outages, it needs to be into the whole telecommunications network.”
Indeed, a separate outage on 27 September affected the National Broadband Network (NBN) in Western Australia’s south-east. That fault, caused by hardware failure, impacted about 700 landline services — including access to Triple Zero — across communities in the Goldfields-Esperance region between 11.30am and 10pm.
These repeated failures have heightened concerns over emergency call reliability and prompted renewed calls for stronger system redundancies and federal oversight of telecommunications providers.
Singtel has invested over A$9.3 billion in Optus over the past five years, a substantial portion of which has gone into improving network infrastructure. However, critics argue the recent outages suggest critical vulnerabilities remain, particularly in emergency service routing.
As investigations continue, the outcomes of the reviews — and any subsequent regulatory or legal consequences — are expected to play a key role in shaping Australia’s approach to telecom safety and accountability.
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