Optus Suffers Another Emergency Call Outage Impacting 4,500 Customers, Prompting Government Investigation

• Repeated failures: Australian telco Optus experienced another emergency call service disruption due to a faulty mobile tower.
• Government intervention: The Australian government has labeled the incident an "absolutely shocking failure."
• Who was impacted: This time, the incident affected approximately 4,500 customers south of Sydney.

Australian telecommunications firm Optus is facing intensified scrutiny after another Optus emergency call outage disrupted services for thousands of customers on Sunday morning. The latest incident was attributed to a faulty mobile phone tower site and affected 4,500 people. 

2025 Optus Emergency Call Outage

The incident occurred in Dapto, approximately 100 kilometers south of Sydney, according to ABC News Australia. 

Optus confirmed that services, including emergency "000" calls, were interrupted before being restored and stated that all callers who attempted to contact emergency services were confirmed to be safe.

The company will not disclose the location of the failed tower, ABC reports.

Government Responds to Optus Network Failure

The government's response has been swift and critical, describing the event as a failure and confirming that the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has been ordered to launch a comprehensive investigation into the Optus network failure.

"This can't happen again. This is an absolutely shocking failure from Optus," Treasurer Jim Chalmers told reporters on Monday. "Our focus as a government is getting to the bottom of what went wrong."

This development adds to the pressure on Optus and its parent company, Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel). 

Singtel's Group CEO, Yuen Kuan Moon, is scheduled to meet with Australia's Communications Minister, Anika Wells, to address the matter, a spokesperson for the minister's office said. Optus Chairman John Arthur and CEO Stephen Rue will also join the meeting.

"Singtel takes this matter seriously and will extend full co-operation to the Australian government and authorities to address the Optus issue," a spokesperson said, cited by Reuters.

Reputational Crisis and Ongoing Investigations

This recent outage exacerbates Optus' reputational crisis, coming less than two weeks after a separate 13-hour network disruption on September 18. That event, caused by a botched firewall upgrade, led to the deaths of four individuals who were unable to access timely aid. 

The company is also still dealing with the fallout from a 2023 nationwide outage and a significant data breach in 2022, which has led to an Australian Information Commissioner lawsuit. 

The recurring failures have raised serious questions about the resilience of Optus's network and its operational protocols, prompting both a Singtel investigation and independent reviews.

In other news, a TPG Telecom cyber incident exposed thousands of customers’ data through an iiNet breach in Australia in August.

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