Optus Firewall Upgrade Caused 14-Hour Emergency Call Outage Linked to Three Deaths
By
croes
Not artisan, but a perfectly fine bagel. Hits the spot.
Summary
Australian telecommunications company Optus experienced a critical network failure during a firewall upgrade on September 18, which prevented customers from making emergency calls for 14 hours. The company's CEO Stephen Rue admitted that staff may not have followed established processes, and initial testing failed to detect the issue. During this outage, three Optus customers died after attempting to call emergency services for help. The company was unaware that network changes caused the problem and reportedly ignored some customer complaints about the service disruption.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledAustralian telco Optus says its staff may not have followed established processes when a firewall upgrade they conducted resulted in customers not being able to call emergency services for 14 hours
a period during which it is thought three of the carrier’s customers died after trying to seek help
CEO Stephen Rue said the company upgraded the firewall at around 12:30AM on September 18
Initial testing and monitoring did not indicate there were any issues with calls connecting – normal calls were connecting as they should
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