This afternoon, CEO Stephen Rue revealed that Optus had identified three additional calls, aside from the two reported yesterday, where customers complained they were unable to reach triple zero.

Rue acknowledged that these calls were not properly escalated within Optus’ system, leaving the telecommunications company unaware of a significant systemic issue for over 13 hours.

The inability to call triple zero affected South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory between 12.30am and 1.30pm on Thursday.

A total of three deaths have thus far linked to the outage.

A separate incident concerning the death of an eight-month-old baby boy in the northern part of Adelaide was initially considered related, but South Australian police have now stated they believe the outage likely did not contribute to the infant’s death.

Rue mentioned today that two of the complaint calls originated from New South Wales, possibly because the callers were near the South Australian border and their calls might have been routed through South Australian towers.

He said welfare checks had been conducted, and that no serious injury or death had been reported as a result of the two calls in New South Wales.