Arabic version: شرطة فيكتوريا تُكمل فحوصات اطمئنان بعد انقطاع في أوبتوس

According to ABC News, Victoria Police carried out about 40 welfare checks after an Optus outage caused some callers to have difficulty reaching emergency services. The outage affected some customers in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory from about 1:30pm yesterday.

Triple Zero Victoria chief operations officer Paul Santamaria said Optus provided details of around 40 calls that experienced difficulty connecting to Telstra’s national Triple Zero emergency call operator. Victoria Police Communications Liaison Officers located in Triple Zero Victoria communications centres conducted welfare checks with affected callers.

Optus said the problem affected some customers’ voice calling services for about one hour and 15 minutes yesterday afternoon. An Optus spokesperson said the company identified the issue within minutes through network monitoring systems, mobilised technical teams and activated escalation processes. The issue was resolved about 3pm, and 41 calls were referred to Victoria Police for welfare checks.

Victoria Police said there were no adverse outcomes or issues of note. South Australia Police conducted two welfare checks linked to the outage, which were completed without incident.

Victorian Health Minister Ingrid Stitt described continuing outages affecting emergency services as “incredibly disappointing and unacceptable”, noting this was the third outage from either Optus or Telstra in the past 12 months. A spokesperson for Communications Minister Anika Wells said telcos have a legal obligation to ensure people can call Triple Zero, and said the Triple Zero Custodian and the Australian Communications and Media Authority would investigate whether those obligations were met.