Australia’s second-largest telco, Optus, has admitted as we speak that just about 2700 calls to triple zero merely did not work throughout their nationwide service outage on November 8 final yr.
Until as we speak, that quantity was 228, a quantity given by Optus executives to a Senate listening to late final yr, and whereas over 200 folks being unable to name emergency companies is a troubling statistic, it will get worse as we speak as that quantity will increase greater than ten-fold.
The telco now says that an “additional 2468 customers that made triple zero calls from our network did not reach the emergency service centre and for which a welfare check was not undertaken”, placing the overall determine at 2697.
Michael Venter is the interim CEO of Optus following the departure of Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, who oversaw the corporate throughout the 2022 knowledge breach and the 2023 nationwide outage.
He mentioned of as we speak’s news that “There is nothing more important to us than the safety and security of our customers, but regrettably on 8 November we did not meet the standards our customers and the community expects from us”.
“I offer my deepest apologies to all those customers who were unable to access triple zero services during the outage and did not receive a follow-up check from us,” he continued.
“We are writing to each customer individually to apologise for this and provide the opportunity to discuss their specific circumstances and whether there is anything we can do to assist them further.
“We know we let our clients down and our whole group is dedicated to addressing all learnings from the outage.”
Optus says it should replace the Senate report on this knowledge, and can present all this data to the ACMA, the federal government physique which is investigating Optus’ compliance with the emergency service name willpower.
Source: www.9news.com.au