By The Straits Times | Created at 2026-09-13 02:16:27 | Updated at 2026-09-13 03:00:40
50 minutes ago
SYDNEY – Australia’s government pledged on Sept 13 to bolster resilience in the nation’s telecommunications networks after an outage at Optus, the country’s No. 2 carrier, impacted users in three states and disrupted some emergency services calls.
The 76-minute technical glitch on Sept 11 affected Optus voice calling services in parts of Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania states and the Northern Territory, with some customers experiencing “intermittent call dropouts”, according to Optus.
It followed an Optus network issue in 2025 that left hundreds of people unable to contact police, fire and ambulance services and resulted in multiple deaths.
Asked on Sept 13 about the latest outage, Communications Minister Anika Wells said “no piece of infrastructure be it roads, bridges, poles, wires is 100 per cent resilient”.
“What we need to do is make sure these systems are as resilient as we can possibly make them,” Wells said in televised remarks.
Optus, owned by Singapore Telecommunications, on Sept 12 apologised for the glitch, which the centre-left government described as “deeply concerning” and said was being investigated.
In 2024, Optus was fined A$12 million (S$10.9 million) by regulators for failing to provide emergency call services to thousands during a nationwide outage in 2023. Optus also suffered a cyberattack in 2022 that affected the data of around 9.5 million Australians. REUTERS
