The Australian government said on Saturday that telecoms firm Optus “let Australians down” after three people died during a network outage that prevented calls to emergency services.
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The outage impacted 600 people across South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory on Thursday evening for at least 10 hours.
Authorities said they were not informed of the incident or deaths until late on Friday.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said on Saturday the telecoms company had “let Australians down when they needed them the most and this isn’t good enough”.
“Optus and all telecommunications providers have obligations under Australian law to ensure that they enable emergency services’ calls.”
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Wells added it was “not good enough” that Optus did not appear to know enough about why the failure occurred and why alarms did not go off 24 hours after the outage.
Wells said an investigation by the communications watchdog was under way.