The Aporia · Police conduct welfare checks after 39 Triple Zero calls fail due to Optus outage

Police conduct welfare checks after 39 Triple Zero calls fail due to Optus outage

Read the original at The Sydney Morning Herald ↗

Cite

APA MLA Chicago

Costa, J. (2026, September 11). Police conduct welfare checks after 39 Triple Zero calls fail due to Optus outage. The Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/police-conduct-welfare-checks-after-39-triple-zero-calls-fail-due-to-optus-outage-20260911-p60wpb.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

Dated when The Aporia collected the article, usually within hours of publication. Check the original for its exact date and byline.

Quick Summary

Victoria Police conducted welfare checks on Friday after 39 Triple Zero calls failed to connect due to an Optus outage, which also affected Tasmania and other states. According to Optus, the outage occurred at approximately 1:30pm AEST and was restored as quickly as possible with technical teams mobilized. The incident comes amid a lawsuit filed by Australia's communications regulator against Optus over last year's Triple Zero outage, which blocked emergency calls for about 13 hours. Optus customers in Victoria, South Australia, the Northern Territory, and Tasmania were affected by the outage, losing service or unable to make/receive calls.

Written locally by qwen2.5:14b on 2026-09-11, using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the same event (that is the story summary below).

AI analysis runs on qwen2.5:14b, locally

Story summary

On Friday, an outage occurred with Optus, affecting emergency services and causing problems for people trying to call Triple Zero (000). The outage lasted for several hours, during which time there were 39 calls from the Victorian region of Australia that struggled to connect. Because of this, Victoria Police conducted welfare checks on the individuals who had made those calls to ensure they didn't need immediate help. Optus became aware of the issue at 1:30pm AEST, and their technical teams worked to resolve it as quickly as possible. The outage was not limited to Victoria, as the Tasmanian Department of Police reported that three Triple Zero calls in Tasmania were also affected.

Written for “Optus Network Outage Causes Chaos” on 2026-10-27, grounded in this article and the 0 other(s) covering the same event.

Compared with similar articles

Nothing to compare against. No article is close enough to this one for the pipeline to have linked or judged the pair.

How this article was measured signals, leaning charts, publisher record, byline, topics and claims

Signals How these are calculated →

Claims extracted

sentences that state something as happening or true

Uncertain

0 of 13 hedged ("reportedly", "may", "according to")

Leaning

not political

takes no side on a contested political question

Publisher signals

61/100

The Sydney Morning Herald's corrections and hedging, across everything collected from it. Not a measure of accuracy.

Outlets on this story

Technology

Same framing elsewhere

articles that frame the event the way this one does

Analyzed 2026-09-11 · how these are computed

How this is being covered How these are calculated →

Article leaning vs. publisher reliability

Source leaning vs. consistency

Publisher

The Sydney Morning Herald · 5147 article(s) · 12 correction(s) detected

Running correction rate · 12 correction(s)

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Who wrote this

James Costa

8 article(s) here · 0 carrying a prediction

🔮 I couldn’t commend her more highly.”

2026-10-21 · assertive framing · The ‘generous’ words Helen Haines had for her rescuers

🔮 The emergency surgery, necessary for the life-threatening blockage, was set to cost them almost $6000.

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2026-09-19 · assertive framing · ‘The most fundamentally decent of people’: Transparency campaigner and Greens MP Tim Read dies aged 64

Also by James Costa

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2026-10-21 · The Sydney Morning Herald

Helen Haines injured in electorate office incident

2026-10-19 · The Sydney Morning Herald

Helen Haines injured near electorate office: reports

2026-10-19 · The Sydney Morning Herald

King Dobby ate a Croc and a bottle top – leaving his owners an impossible $6000 choice

2026-10-17 · The Sydney Morning Herald

Nothing else under this byline is closely related to this article, so these are simply their most recent.

All 8 articles by James Costa →

Topics

Optus Tasmania Telstra Triple Zero Triple Zero Victoria

Subjects

Optus ORG · 8× South Australia GPE · 2× Tasmania GPE · 2× Telstra ORG · 2× Triple Zero Victoria ORG · 2× the Northern Territory GPE · 2× Paul Santamaria PERSON · 1× The Tasmanian Department of Police, Fire and Emergency Management ORG · 1× Victoria GPE · 1× Victoria Police ORG · 1×

Narrative

The Australian Communications and Media Authority filed civil penalty proceedings in the Federal Court against Optus Mobile over the September 18 outage, when a bungled firewall upgrade blocked calls to Triple Zero across South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Far West NSW for about 13 hours.

framing: assertive · carried by 1 article(s) · first seen 2026-09-11

2026-09-11 · The Sydney Morning Herald

Police conduct welfare checks after 39 Triple Zero calls fail due to Optus outage · assertive framing

Claims (13 extracted, 0 hedged)

Thirty-nine Triple Zero calls struggled to connect to the Telstra national emergency line because of an Optus outage on Friday, Triple Zero Victoria says. asserted

Victoria → struggle → Friday

Victoria Police said it was completing welfare checks on impacted callers following the outage on Friday afternoon. asserted

it → say → afternoon

“Just before 7pm, Optus has provided details of 39 calls that experienced difficulty connecting to the Telstra national Triple Zero (000) Emergency Call Person,” Triple Zero Victoria chief operations officer Paul Santamaria said. asserted

Santamaria → provide → Person

Earlier on Friday, Optus confirmed it became aware of an outage at “approximately 1.30pm AEST and immediately mobilised technical teams and restored services as quickly as possible”. asserted

it → confirm → services

The Tasmanian Department of Police, Fire and Emergency Management said Optus had advised it of an outage which affected three Triple Zero calls in Tasmania. asserted

which → say → Tasmania

“Police subsequently contacted the callers, and it was determined they did not require immediate police or emergency services,” the department said. asserted

department → contact → services

Some Optus customers had taken to social media earlier in the day, stating they had lost service or were unable to make or receive calls. asserted

they → take → calls

Optus sent a text message to customers saying that in Victoria, South Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania “Optus has loss of coverage due to this outage”. asserted

Optus → send → outage

“Emergency service calls can be accessed where other mobile provider coverage is available or are able to call via Wi-Fi.” asserted

coverage → access → Fi

In July, Australia’s communications regulator sued Optus over last year’s Triple Zero outage, alleging the telco failed to connect emergency calls on 1005 occasions and exposing it to penalties of more than $500 million. asserted

telco → sue → million

upgrade → file → hours

The outage was linked to two deaths. asserted

outage → link → deaths

Be the first to know when major news happens. asserted

news → know → ?