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Opposition communications spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh has called on Optus CEO Stephen Rue to make a public appearance this afternoon following another Optus outage that may have affected calls to Triple Zero.

“Come and step forward,” McIntosh told reporters at Parliament House in Canberra. “You stand here and talk to Australians and give them the confidence they need that your network will deliver the services you promise.

“I said this, during that meeting [Rue]I had my doubts that there would be no more Triple Zero cuts. This is again related to infrastructure. “As we get closer to the fire disaster season that’s happening now, how are Australians going to have that confidence that they can make those Triple Zero calls?”

The outage in the NSW Hunter region affected mobile voice and data services for 34,000 customers in Port Stephens, Maitland and other parts of the Hunter.

This came two days after Rue faced a Senate investigation into the September outage that was linked to the deaths of three people.

“It doesn’t matter what the circumstances were that led to this,” McIntosh said. “If someone can’t make that phone call, it’s a matter of life or death.”

Following the outage in September, Optus pledged to add 300 people to its Australian call centers and increase security measures surrounding Triple Zero calls, focusing on its emergency network.

The rules, which come into force on Saturday, require telecommunications companies to report Triple Zero outages to the communications watchdog and emergency services in real time.

from AAP