Australians angry as Singapore-owned Optus hit by second outage in 10 days

Australian telco Optus said on Monday that it had suffered an emergency call outage in an area south of Sydney, 10 days after a broader disruption that it said had probably caused four deaths when customers were unable to get timely aid.

The Australian government has been seeking answers about the disruptions at the country’s No 2 telecom, which is owned by Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel).

Singtel Group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon plans to meet Australia’s Communications Minister Anika Wells this week, the minister’s office said. Yuen will meet Wells along with Optus Chairman John Arthur and CEO Stephen Rue, Singtel said.

“Singtel takes this matter seriously and will extend full co-operation to the Australian government and authorities to address the Optus issue,” Singtel said.

Optus said on Monday that a faulty mobile phone tower site in Dapto, around 100km (62 miles) south of Sydney, interrupted services, including emergency calls, on Sunday morning and impacted 4,500 people.

“Optus continues to investigate the cause … the issue has been restored,” it said. The company said it “confirmed with police that all callers who attempted to contact emergency services are OK”.