Optus boss Stephen Rue admits procedures weren’t followed with WA Police left in the dark over 000 outage

The deadly catalogue of errors made by Optus in its dealing with a triple-0 outage that left three dead has become clearer, with WA Police revealing they were kept in the dark about the connection issues for almost 24 hours — and then assured it was only minor.

Optus boss Stephen Rue also revealed on Sunday that five people complained to the telco about not being able to connect to triple-0 during the outage — three more than previously thought — but no alarm was raised.

The chief executive added “established processes were not followed” during the outage, caused when the telco updated its systems on Thursday.

It led to a 13-hour period during which more than 600 customers in WA, South Australia and the Northern Territory could not contact emergency services.

Three people died as a result of the outage, including two Perth men, aged 74 and 49, and a 68-year-old woman from Adelaide.

The death of an eight-week-old baby was initially also thought to be linked to the outage, but SA Police have since said it was unlikely to have contributed to the child’s death.

Optus’ reviews of the incident have uncovered another two people in NSW, close to the South Australian border, who were also not able to contact triple-0.

The company is talking to its staff to establish the full technical detail of the network failure and work out why usual processes weren’t followed at the time to establish what had happened.

It has also changed its rules about customer complaints after it found that five people who called to say they couldn’t contact triple-0 were met with “troubleshooting” rather than having the issue escalated.

“As we had not detected the triple-0 failures in our network at the time of these calls, there were no red flags for the contact centre to alert them to any live issues,” Mr Rue said on Sunday.

“This is not clearly good enough.”

Optus did not realise the outage was a problem until almost midday on Thursday, at which point it stopped the network upgrade and restored triple-0 access.

Mr Rue said the outage wasn’t discovered in part because the volume of non-emergency calls was normal. Optus is now monitoring triple-0 call volumes constantly to ensure any unusual drop-off is picked up quickly.

The calls blocked included 149 from people in WA.

But WA Police Commander Jodie Pearson said when Optus contacted the force at 9.04pm Thursday evening – almost 22 hours after the disruption began at 10.40pm on Wednesday – the telco described it as a “minor outage” and only asked for police to check on 26 people.

It wasn’t until late on Friday afternoon, about the same time that Mr Rue fronted media, that Optus told police about the full extent of the calls blocked in WA and that at least one person had died.

WA Police confirmed they had found a second person had died on Saturday.

Acting Premier Rita Saffioti said she was shocked when she learned of the full extent of the problem.

“It’s clear that Optus has very much failed the Western Australian public, have not put in the protocols that they were meant to put in in relation to notification once these lines . . . went down,” she said.

“An outage occurred and no one knew about it, and that meant people were not prepared in case of emergency.”

Mr Rue said Optus had its own protocols which involved attempting to contact each customer twice, and then telling emergency authorities about those who it hadn’t been able to get in touch with.

Cdr Pearson said WA Police did not question the initial numbers because its first focus was making sure those people were safe.

“It is the responsibility of the service carriers to make every effort to contact people, but when you’re ringing triple-0, you’re having the worst day in your life. You need fire, you need police, or you need ambulance,” she said.

But WA Police will raise its broader concerns about the emergency outage protocols through a national working group and wants to see more accountability from telcos.

Cdr Pearson said whether those protocols was followed would be a matter for Federal regulator the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

“The best time (for a telco) to contact emergency services is when the outage is occurring,” she said.

“That way, we can send out public safety messaging. We can ask people to check on family and friends. We can advise that Optus isn’t getting through to triple-0 and to use an alternative carrier.

“That is what we strongly advocate, and that’s what the protocols say.”

ACMA will release details of its investigation on Monday.

It is expected to look at what the technical failure was and what Optus did in response, including whether it met its legal obligations to let customers, triple-0 operator Telstra, and regulators know what was going on.

Federal minister Kristy McBain said the outage was “absolutely disgraceful” and Optus must take on board the feedback from reviews.

“The fact that this is the second outage in only a couple of years, and the fact that no state or the federal government was advised of this outage I think is beyond reprehensible,” she said.

“No doubt that they will be employing crisis communications specialists to come in and help them, but what they need to be doing is getting their systems in order so that Australians can have confidence that when they dial Triple-0, it’s going to get through to one of our emergency operators.”

Mr Rue reiterated how sorry he was for the deaths.

He also apologised on Sunday to all customers affected, saying he acknowledged that the connection failures had created immense distress.

Peak body the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network said Optus must be held accountable for the deadly outage and telco self-regulation had proven a failure.

It called for the Government to appoint an independent technical expert to oversee Optus’ triple-0 capability and to fast-track legislation fully implementing the recommendations from the review into the telco’s 2023 outage.

“People should never be left wondering whether Triple-0 will connect when they need it most,” chief executive Carol Bennett said.

“The solutions are known and must be put into law, enforced, and monitored in real time. Anything less is unacceptable.”