Optus taken to Federal Court by ACMA over deadly triple-0 outage in September, 2025
The telecommunications regulator has revealed it will start court proceedings over a deadly triple-0 outage that impacted hundreds of calls.
Australia’s telecommunication regulator has revealed it has commenced legal action against Optus over a deadly triple-0 outage.
The Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA) announced on Thursday morning it had begun Federal Court proceedings against the country’s second largest service provider.
ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said access to emergency call services was “essential to protect the Australian public”.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“Australians rightly expect that when they call triple-0, their call will connect,” she said.
“The circumstances of this outage meant that did not reliably occur, leaving people unable to connect to potentially lifesaving services,” she said.
“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.”
The legal action follows a 14-hour outage for Optus customers that began shortly after midnight on September 18 and left some customers unable to reach emergency services.
An independent report prepared for Optus by Kerry Schott and published three months later found errors during upgrades to the network caused triple-0 calls to fail in South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and parts of far west NSW.
Ms Schott found Optus did not know of the problem for 13 hours, with 75 per cent of 605 attempted triple-0 calls failing during the outage.
The report notes that police linked two deaths to the unconnected emergency calls.
The ACMA will allege Optus breached two separate legal obligations, by failing to provide access to the triple-0 system and failing to ensure emergency calls went through on 1005 occasions.
Each contravention carries a maximum penalty of $250,000.
“The ACMA will not hesitate to take strong enforcement action where alleged telco failures have jeopardised public access to the critical emergency call service,” Ms O’Loughlin said.
Optus has been contacted for comment.
Originally published as Regulator launches legal action against Optus over deadly September 2025 triple-0 outage
