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Optus is heading to court over a September 2025 Triple Zero outage that left hundreds of Australians unable to reach emergency services.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) today commenced Federal Court proceedings against the telco, alleging breaches of two fundamental legal obligations.
The regulator alleges that on 1,005 occasions, Optus failed to: a) give customers using its service access to an emergency call service, and b) ensure emergency calls were carried to an appropriate termination point.
Either failure would be a breach of the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999. If found guilty, Optus may be required to pay penalties of up to $250,000 per contravention.
With more than 1,000 contraventions before the court, this could be a significant financial hit for Australia's second-largest telco.
ACMA Chair Nerida O’Loughlin said the regulator "would not hesitate" to take action over telco failures that endanger the lives of customers.
“Australians rightly expect that when they call Triple Zero, their call will connect.
“The circumstances of this outage meant that did not reliably occur, leaving people unable to connect to potentially life-saving services.”
What happened during Optus’ 2025 outage?
Optus’ September 18, 2025 outage lasted for over 13 hours and impacted customers in New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
While normal calls were unaffected, 75% of Triple Zero calls made on the network went unconnected; these were later linked to two deaths. An Optus review found that the outage was caused by a routine system upgrade.
Internal investigations also found that the Optus call centre was notified several times by customers that Triple Zero calls were failing.
The Optus network previously experienced a major nationwide outage in November 2023, which also impacted Triple Zero calls. The telco went on to pay over $12 million in penalties after an ACMA investigation.
Mobile networks not infallible, but telcos can do more
Today’s news comes just weeks after Telstra’s mobile network went down and left 45% of calls unconnected, including more than 600 calls to Triple Zero.
Although no deaths have been linked to the outage, it triggered a Senate hearing on July 17, in which Telstra CEO Vicki Brady acknowledged the telco "let the community down."
Like Optus, Telstra could be slammed with millions of dollars in fines if the ACMA initiates court proceedings. However, Ms Brady told the Senate that even with tighter processes, network outages could never be fully prevented.
"I would love to be able to sit here and say there will be zero outages. The reality of a complex network environment with fast-evolving technology — you just can't. No telco around the world could guarantee that."
Despite this, the ACMA will keep putting pressure on telcos to do better.
“Giving access to the emergency call service is not optional, it is a fundamental legal obligation and the most important public safety responsibility telecommunications providers have,” Ms O’Loughlin said.
