Telco giant Optus is being sued in Federal Court after a fatal Triple Zero outage last year.

Hundreds of emergency calls in four states and territories were blocked during the outage on September 18, which lasted for almost 14 hours.

The incident was linked to two deaths due to failed Triple Zero calls. 

On Thursday, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) said it had commenced proceedings in the Federal Court against Optus Mobile Pty Limited (Optus Mobile).

The ACMA alleges that, during the outage, the telco breached two separate legal obligations on 1,005 occasions.

The authority alleges it failed to ‘give end-users who made emergency calls using an emergency telephone service supplied by Optus Mobile access to the emergency call service’.

It also claimed Optus failed to ‘ensure that those emergency calls were carried to the relevant termination point’.

The Daily Mail has contacted Optus for comment. 

Telco giant Optus is being sued in Federal Court after a fatal Triple Zero outage last year

‘Australians rightly expect that when they call Triple Zero, their call will connect,’ ACMA Chair Nerida O’Loughlin said in a statement. 

‘The circumstances of this outage meant that did not reliably occur, leaving people unable to connect to potentially life-saving services.

‘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 maximum penalty available to the court is $250,000 per contravention. 

The lawsuit comes after previous enforcement action by ACMA over an Optus outage in November 2023.

Singtel Optus subsidiaries, including Optus Mobile, paid more than $12million in infringement notice penalties imposed by the authority for breaches relating to emergency calls. 

These included failures to give access to the emergency call service during that outage.

More to come.