Anger in Australia after telecom outage linked to deaths
Australian officials promised to face “important results” on a system deduction of more than one death, the telecommunication giant Optus.
Last week, the incident could not look for emergency service for 13 hours in half of the country.
Optus, one of the two major providers of the country, says that at least three people have died and the general manager apologizes to their families and the public “completely unacceptable” failure.
In two years, the company is under fire due to the delayed processing of the event, which has a second deduction for the company, and the country’s communication regulator.
Last Thursday, more than 600 urgent service calls failed, primarily coming from South Australia, Western Australia and North. At least two calls were not connected to the triple-0 from the Southwest New South Wales.
However, Optus waited 40 hours to inform the public about the incident and also did not tell the regulators until the issue was resolved – Australian Media and Communication Authority (ACMA), against standard application.
At a press conference held in the afternoon on Friday, the optus boss Stephen Rue accused the interruption during a technical failure during a network raising.
Authorized, including a baby boy, the prosperity controls made after the restoration of the services have been killed, but the police since then, the possibility of a net failure in this case was not “possible”, he said. The WA officials say they believe that a fourth person died after the Triple-0 call has failed.
In a series of updates at the weekend, Mr. Rue said the company was not aware of the incident 13 hours. More than one customer had tried to inform the company that the network did not work, but the complaints were not raised or handled “as expected”.
Rue said on Sunday, “I want to repeat how sad I am about the sad loss of the life of four people who cannot reach emergency services when they need it.” He said.
He continued: “What I can provide you will be done and will be done to ensure that it does not happen in the future.”
In a statement, an Acma spokesman said the regulator “deeply worried” with the status and processing.
“Australians should be able to communicate with emergency services when they need assistance. This is the most basic responsibility of each TelCo provider to the public.”
The regulator had previously found that Optus could not access emergency call services during an interruption in 2023 and could not access emergency call services and then could not control 369 people affected. The penalties were shot more than $ 12 million ($ 8 million; 6 million £).
Communication Minister Anika Wells said that on Monday, telecommunications providers were not “an excuse” for tripartite 0 call failures, and that the Prime Minister said that he should consider resigning.
“You are not surprising to hear that I expressed my incredible frustration because we are here again here. Or here is here again.”
The company said, “Australia maintained an enormous failure in the people of Australia” and “will face important results”.
The investigations are still going on, but Mr. Rue said that he plans to give public updates on a daily basis, while “more information is known.”
