Australia's Optus vows to cooperate w/ probes amid outrage over services outage

20/9/2025 17:45

Optus, Australia's No. 2 telecom carrier, said on Saturday it would cooperate with official investigations after four people died following a technical failure that disrupted emergency call services for 13 hours.



Amid a growing outcry, two of the dead were identified as an eight-week-old boy and a 68-year-old woman, police in South Australia said. The two other fatalities were men aged 74 and 49, police in Western Australia said.



Optus CEO Stephen Rue said in a statement late on Saturday that he was "deeply saddened" at news of the latest death, the 49-year-old. Police said the man's body was found during welfare checks prompted by the glitch.



Earlier on Saturday, Rue, at his second press conference on the incident in two days, repeated apologies and said Optus would carry out an independent review of the incident.



"I promise that we will fully cooperate with any and all investigations in relation to this," he said in Sydney.



The 13-hour glitch on Thursday occurred during a firewall upgrade for the network, the company said.