Optus deny police claims that outage in South Australia may have prevented people from calling triple-0

Optus have denied claims by police that an outage may have stopped people from calling triple-0 near a South Australian town, with the telco confirming the issue has now been resolved.

Optus phone calls and mobile data in and around Angaston, a town about 70km northeast of Adelaide, went out shortly before 5am on Sunday.

The telco managed to fix the issue about five hours later, an Optus spokesperson said, meaning it had been resolved by 10.30am ACST.

More than 30 minutes after that, police issued a statement saying triple-0 phone calls from Angaston may be affected due to an Optus outage.

However an Optus spokeswoman claimed the area is in fact covered by Telstra and Vodafone (TPG), therefore triple-0 calls made between 5am and 10.30am would have been received by emergency services.

A South Australia Police spokesperson said their initial outage alert went out at 11.01am, claiming they were advised the outage had been restored nearly an hour later at 12.06pm.

“We were advised that services had been restored at 12.06pm and updated our media release to reflect this,” the spokesperson said.

“While SAPOL is aware of the emergency ‘camp-on’ capability allowing connection to alternative networks where available, our approach when notified of a telecommunications outage is to promptly inform the public so they can make informed decisions in the event of an emergency.

“Our priority in issuing the alert was to ensure community safety, particularly given the essential nature of access to triple-0 services.”

Sunday’s outage was caused by a hardware fault at an Optus base station, a spokeswoman for the telco said.

Following an Optus outage in November 2023, federal laws were tightened forcing the telcos to provide real-time outage information to the government regulator ACMA.

The rules took effect in November 2025, and require the telcos to notify ACMA, the government and emergency services of an outage “as soon as practicable”, and provide six-hourly updates for the first 24 hours of the outage.

South Australia Police warned the public at 11am Sunday that the outage affected people in the area of Angaston, 60km northeast of Adelaide.

“An equipment fault is impacting mobile voice and data services, which may affect calls to triple-0,” a police spokesperson said.

“Optus technicians are on site working to resolve the issue.”

Around an hour after the original alert, a police update said the issue was fixed.

“Police have been advised that the earlier Optus outage affecting customers in Angaston has been resolved,” a police spokesperson later said.

The first alert from the telco said multiple Optus towers in the area of Angaston might be affected, but an updated alert narrowed the issue down.

“There’s an issue with one of our mobile towers in this area,” an updated alert says.

“We’re working hard to fix the problem, until we do, your mobile service may experience some issues. Thanks for being patient with us.”

In the early afternoon hours, after police said the issue was fixed, the Optus website was still showing an outage alert.

An “unplanned equipment failure” was to blame, the Optus alert said, and “approximately 1757 services” were affected by the outage around Angaston.

“Optus has loss of coverage due to this outage,” Optus’ alert said.

The outage affected voice calls and mobile data.

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

Two deaths have been linked to a 14-hour Optus outage in September 2025, which stymied triple-0 calls in South Australia, WA, the NT and NSW.

Optus commissioned an independent report into the outage, which the company chairman described as “sobering”.

The report was released in December, and recommended sweeping changes to strengthen tests during network outages, making sure staff escalate issues outside their immediate work teams if they have doubts, and even the company board was put on notice to “consider the adequacy of its skill base and depth”.

The independent report of Kerry Schott also recommended speeding up moving call centres onshore.

Optus chief executive Stephen Rue said the report would inform how the company would “reform”, and that many improvements were already underway.

“In line with our commitment to be open about the events of 18 September, we will regularly report our progress to restore confidence in Optus and our network,” Mr Rue said in a statement in December.