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Adelaide’s Simone Porcaro considered herself fortunate to be with her youngster when an alarming incident unfolded the previous week.
Her spouse was experiencing lapses in consciousness at their home, and her attempts to contact emergency services failed.
“My husband clearly needed an ambulance, so I dialed twice. There was complete silence … no dial tone or response,” she explained to 10 News.
“That’s when my seven-year-old daughter suggested using her dad’s phone.”
By turning him over and unlocking the phone with his thumb, Porcaro successfully called triple-zero.
More than 26 hours later, Optus gave her a call to see if she needed assistance.
“I said, ‘We are already at the hospital. I don’t need this, but I needed it then.'”
Porcaro says she feels lucky that she was able to get through to emergency services — but it was only because her husband has a different phone provider than she does.
“It just makes me angry because I should be able to call triple-zero.
“We had another phone in the household, but it’s not every day that my husband and I are home at the same time.”
After being with Optus for more than 15 years, she’s now considering changing providers.
“I’m definitely thinking about switching. I’ve been with Optus for more than 15 years, so I stuck by them after the last outage,” she said.
“I’ve already Googled this morning for other telcos I can look into.”
‘Significant consequences’
While Optus may lose goodwill with customers like Porcaro, it’s also facing “significant consequences”.
Communications Minister Anika Wells addressed the media on Monday morning, saying Optus will be “held accountable for this failure”.
“They have caused a failure for Australians with this incident. Significant repercussions should be expected,” she stated.
On Monday, Communications Minister Anika Wells announced that the Australian Communications and Media Authority has initiated an inquiry into the Optus network disruption. Source: AAP / Mick Tsikas
The telco industry’s regulator has launched an investigation into the network outage, and could impose financial penalties on Optus, although criminal charges cannot be laid under current legislation.
Optus CEO Stephen Rue said: “Approximately 600 customers were potentially impacted, of which a proportion of their calls did not go through.
“I have been advised that during the process of conducting welfare checks, three of the triple-zero calls involved households where a person tragically passed away,” he said at a press conference on Friday afternoon.
Two of the deceased were from South Australia and one from Western Australia, Rue confirmed.
“I offer my sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the people who passed away. I am so sorry for your loss. What has happened is completely unacceptable. We have let you down.”
