ACMA to sue Optus in Federal Court over 2025 network outage

The nation’s second largest telco, Optus, is being sued in the Federal Court over last year’s major network outage in which hundreds of calls failed to reach Triple Zero.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) alleges Optus breached two legal obligations more than 1,000 times. These included making sure customers who made emergency calls had access to the emergency call service and to ensure those calls were carried appropriately.

The massive outage, which occurred last September, went for almost 14 hours and was linked to two deaths. During the 14-hour outage 75 per cent of Triple Zero calls failed from a total of 605 attempts.

In December, Optus released a review commissioned by experienced business and public service executive Kerry Schott, which found widespread failures contributed to the outage and prevented a faster resolution. The report found a routine network upgrade was plagued by multiple failures by Optus and its contractor Nokia — with as many as 10 crucial mistakes being made and the Optus call centre did not escalate warnings from five callers who said Triple Zero calls were failing.

The report said Optus needed to overhaul its network operations which “clearly failed” and improve risk management and internal audit functions. ACMA Chair Nerida O’Loughlin said the public must be able to access Triple Zero in an emergency.

The maximum penalty available to the court is $250,000 per contravention.