One thousand and five

At 00:17 AEST on 18 September 2025, twenty-two months after Optus's first major Triple Zero outage, Optus says a firewall upgrade went wrong. Optus's own account, given to a Senate committee and not an independent finding, states that "a technical failure during a network upgrade impacted 605 unique service numbers connecting to emergency services in South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and far west New South Wales" ¹. The outage lasted, in Optus's revised figure, over 14 hours, from 00:17 to 14:34 AEST ¹. By Optus's count, of the 605 service numbers that tried to reach Triple Zero, 150 got through. The other 455 did not ¹.

This time the regulator did not issue an infringement notice. On 30 July 2026 the Australian Communications and Media Authority began proceedings in the Federal Court against Optus Mobile Pty Limited, alleging 1,005 contraventions of two obligations: to give end users access to the emergency call service, and to ensure those calls were carried to the relevant termination point ². None of it is proved.

What happened, what Optus says caused it, what ACMA alleges and one of the reasons it chose court over a notice this time, and what is still not settled: this article sets it out below.

01How it happened, as Optus tells it

Optus's submission to the Senate Environment and Communications Committee, its own account and not an independent finding, sets out what it says went wrong. A "soft lock", which Optus describes as an action that "drains the traffic and prevents new traffic entering the SBG", was put in place at 00:17:27 AEST on 18 September 2025 on a session border gateway (SBG) during a firewall upgrade ¹. Optus says the change had been brought forward 24 hours from its planned date, and that the outage began because the traffic had not first been moved off the device. Optus says the wrong procedure was used ¹.

Optus told the committee: "Optus accepts accountability for its failures that led to this interruption of Triple Zero services" ¹. That is Optus's public statement to a parliamentary committee, not a plea in the Federal Court case now before the court. Optus also told the committee that the improvements made since 2023 were not enough on their own: "Despite improvements implemented since that time, the 2025 outage shows that further action is required by industry and government to collaboratively ensure the resilience of the Triple Zero ecosystem" ¹.

02Ten days later

iTnews reported that on 28 September 2025, ten days after the outage, a smaller Optus failure at Dapto, New South Wales, again left customers unable to reach emergency services: "Optus has experienced another, albeit smaller-scale, incident where nine customers could not get through to emergency services" ³.

03Not a notice, but the court

On 30 July 2026 the Australian Communications and Media Authority began Federal Court proceedings against Optus Mobile Pty Limited over the 18 September 2025 outage. ACMA alleges Optus Mobile breached two obligations under the Telecommunications (Emergency Call Service) Determination 2019 on 1,005 occasions: failing to give end users access to the emergency call service, and failing to ensure those emergency calls were carried to the relevant termination point ². ACMA is seeking declarations of contravention and pecuniary penalties. "The maximum penalty available to the court is $250,000 per contravention," its release states ². None of it is proved.

The difference from the first outage is what the regulator did next. After the 2023 outage, ACMA issued infringement notices, which three Optus companies paid, and payment was not an admission of liability, as this case's first article recorded. This time it went to the Federal Court, and it gave one of its reasons. "The recurrence of a major network outage affecting emergency calls so soon after the November 2023 outage is a significant concern and one of the reasons the ACMA has decided to take this matter to court," said ACMA Chair Nerida O'Loughlin ².

After the first, notices. After the second major outage, the Federal Court.

ACMA describes the duty in plain terms. "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 regulator said in the same release ².

Six hundred and eighty days, about twenty-two months, separate the first major outage on 8 November 2023 from this one on 18 September 2025. This case's first article recorded that the 2023 outage took just under a year, 362 days on our count, to reach its infringement notices. From this outage to ACMA's Federal Court filing is 315 days, just over ten months ².

04The responses

The Minister for Communications, Anika Wells, welcomed ACMA's decision to go to court and declined further comment while the matter is before it. "I welcome the action being taken by the independent regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, in the Federal Court. These are serious alleged failures by Optus," she said ⁴.

Optus would not discuss the case with the ABC. "An Optus spokesperson said it would not be appropriate to comment on the legal proceedings, but the telco remained focused on 'building a stronger and better Optus'," the ABC reported ⁵. The same spokesperson added: "We continue to invest in network resilience, strengthen our systems and processes, build and foster a culture of transparency and accountability" ⁵.

In September 2026, the ABC reported that Optus declined to say how many customers it had compensated after the September 2025 outage, or by how much, citing the "confidential nature of customer arrangements" ⁶.

05Reforms already under way

On THE RORT's reading of the timeline, the second major outage came before the government's own deadline for its reforms had passed. The government accepted all 18 recommendations of the Bean Review into the 2023 outage on 17 May 2024, saying it intended to implement them over 12 to 18 months ⁷. Four hundred and eighty-nine days, about 16 months, passed between that response and the 18 September 2025 outage: inside the window the government had set itself ⁷.

That does not mean nothing had been done. Four days after the outage, the government said 12 of the 18 recommendations were in place, with the rest underway ⁸; the three addressed to Optus and other carriers were found implemented by Optus's own assessment, agreed by a consultant it engaged ⁹.

A separate review commissioned by the Optus board and led by Kerry Schott AO, released 18 December 2025, found the outage came from a series of at least ten mistakes by Optus employees and a contractor, and listed 21 possible improvement measures, which Optus calls recommendations ⁹. Optus chairman John Arthur said the board was "taking further action in relation to individual accountabilities flowing from the incident, which will extend from financial penalties through to termination in appropriate cases" ¹⁰.

A Senate inquiry prompted by the outage, chaired by Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, reported on 21 September 2026 with 11 recommendations, among them an independent review of ACMA itself and, separately, new powers for ACMA to compel information and evidence ⁶.

06What is not settled

One thing this article does not state is how many people, if any, died because of the outage. Deaths have been reported in connection with it. No coroner has yet made a finding on any of them, and police in Western Australia have said one death first linked to it appears, on preliminary investigation, not to be connected. "It would not be accurate if I gave a final answer before those investigations were complete for the coroner," WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch said in November 2025 ¹¹.

Update, 30 September 2026. The line above that no coroner has yet made a finding rests on one source and date: ABC News, 24 November 2025 ¹¹, when WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch said the investigations were not complete for the coroner. That report covers the Perth death only: it does not say whether any coroner had made a finding on the South Australian deaths. THE RORT has not found a later public finding and is putting the question to the South Australian and Western Australian coroners; any answer, or its absence, will be added here.

Update, 7 October 2026. THE RORT put the question to the South Australian and Western Australian coroners by email on 2 October 2026. An automatic reply came back from South Australia; that is not a response. Any answer, or its absence, will be added here.

We have not located a file number, hearing date or judge for ACMA v Optus Mobile Pty Limited. Until the court decides the case, ACMA's allegations remain allegations.

Questions have not yet been put to ACMA or Optus; any answers, or their absence, will be added here as dated updates.

Update, 7 October 2026. When this article was published on 25 September 2026, no questions had been put to ACMA or Optus. THE RORT emailed both on 2 October 2026, and a response was requested by 5pm AEDT on Thursday 8 October 2026. Any response, or its absence, will be added here as dated updates.

Update, 8 October 2026. Optus's media team replied by email on 8 October 2026 to the questions THE RORT emailed on 2 October. The email is signed Optus Media Team and carries no request that it be kept off the record. It says: "Optus’s position on these matters is on the public record, including our submission to the Senate Environment and Communications Committee following the September 2025 Triple Zero outage." That submission is quoted above ¹. The email also says: "Matters currently before the Federal Court will be addressed through the appropriate legal process." It links a release that Optus dated 21 September 2026 ¹². The reply does not directly answer the questions. It does not say whether Optus contests the allegations in ACMA's Federal Court proceeding, and its Federal Court sentence names no matter, so this article does not say which matter it refers to. It does not give the date on which, by its own assessment, Optus implemented each of the three Bean Review recommendations addressed to Optus and other carriers, does not say how many of the 21 Schott Review measures are implemented, does not say whether the figure of 605 counts callers, service numbers or call attempts, or how many Triple Zero calls were attempted in total, and does not say whether compensation was offered to customers after the outage. In the release, Optus says it accepted all 21 recommendations of the review led by Kerry Schott AO and that many have already been completed or embedded into business-as-usual operations. Those are Optus's statements, not findings; the release gives no number of completed recommendations and no completion dates. THE RORT's question to ACMA carries the same reply time, 5pm AEDT on Thursday 8 October 2026, and any answer, or its absence, will be added here as a dated update.

Update, 8 October 2026. THE RORT emailed six questions on 2 October 2026 to the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts, on this case's two published articles. The Department's media team (Media Services) replied by email on 8 October 2026, on the record. The email says the response "can be attributed to a spokesperson from the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts". The response reads, in full, in three paragraphs: "The Australian Government is continuing its priority work to strengthen the Triple Zero system and improve oversight and accountability of the telecommunications sector to ensure it delivers for the Australian community." "We have completed a number of significant reforms, including increasing maximum penalties for telcos who fail to follow Triple Zero rules to $30 million per breach, mandating real time reporting of outages to ACMA and emergency services, and ensuring Triple Zero calls fall back to other networks." "The Triple Zero Custodian is leading a review of the legislation and regulations underpinning the Triple Zero system, focused on identifying and addressing gaps in the framework and working towards a future model for Triple Zero that meets public expectations." The reply does not say whether the $30 million maximum applies to any conduct before 31 October 2025, including the 18 September 2025 outage (question 1). It does not say whether the Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Consumer Safeguards) Bill would change the maximum penalty for any breach of the Triple Zero rules (question 2). It does not say which 12 of the 18 Bean Review recommendations were in place when the government said, as the ABC reported on 22 September 2025, that 12 had been put in place, which six were not, or whether the position was the same on 18 September 2025 (question 3). It does not say as at what date the other 17 Bean Review recommendations were complete (question 4). It does not say when the government will respond to the Senate report of 21 September 2026 and to its recommendation for an independent review of ACMA (question 5). It does not say whether the caution of Labor senators on the committee against reviewing ACMA until an analysis of the Triple Zero framework and the ACCC's inquiry were completed, as the ABC reported on 21 September 2026, is the government's own position (question 6). A maximum of $30 million for each contravention of subsection 148(1) or (3) of the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999 was set by the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Triple Zero Custodian and Emergency Calling Powers) Act 2025, which inserted it into the Telecommunications Act 1997 and commenced on 31 October 2025, the day after Royal Assent ¹³; the $250,000 per contravention above is the maximum ACMA's release states for its Federal Court case over the 18 September 2025 outage ². No response was received from ACMA by the deadline, 5pm AEDT on Thursday 8 October 2026. No response was received from the South Australian courts media address (media@courts.sa.gov.au), to which the question for the coroner was sent, by the deadline, 5pm AEDT on Thursday 8 October 2026; the only mail received was an automatic out-of-office reply from a Courts Administration Authority staff member. No response was received from the Western Australian Department of Justice (media@justice.wa.gov.au), to which the question for the Coroners Court of Western Australia was sent, by the deadline, 5pm AEDT on Thursday 8 October 2026.

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