Optus voice calls dropped out across four states for about 75 minutes on Friday afternoon, and more than 40 callers had trouble reaching triple zero while the network was down.
The disruption started at about 1.30pm on Friday 11 September, with intermittent call dropouts, and services were restored at about 3pm. Customers in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory were affected, and the total disruption ran roughly one hour and 15 minutes.
Optus said its network monitoring systems identified the issue “within minutes” and that technical teams were mobilised. The company has apologised.
Welfare Checks Across Four States
Victoria Police liaison officers working inside Triple Zero Victoria ran welfare checks through Friday afternoon and evening. Triple Zero Victoria chief operations officer Paul Santamaria said Optus gave the national triple zero operator details of roughly 40 calls that struggled to connect, and that the liaison officers “conducted welfare checks with the affected calls”.
Victoria Police said it completed about 40 checks. “There were no adverse outcomes or issues of note,” the force said.
South Australia Police completed two welfare checks “without incident”. Tasmania Police contacted three affected callers after the state’s Department of Police, Fire and Emergency Management was told about them.
Optus said it referred 41 calls to Victoria Police.
The figures were confirmed publicly on Saturday by Triple Zero Victoria, Victoria Police and Optus.
Government Response
Victorian health minister Ingrid Stitt called the outage “incredibly disappointing and unacceptable”.
“It’s the third time that we’ve had an outage from either Optus or Telstra in the last 12 months,” she said.
She said the issues would be taken up urgently with the telcos and the Commonwealth, and added: “People rely on Triple Zero in an emergency.”
A spokesperson for federal Communications Minister Anika Wells said telcos had “a legal obligation to ensure people can call Triple Zero in their time of need”. The spokesperson said the Triple Zero Custodian and the Australian Communications and Media Authority would investigate to ensure those obligations were met.
The Earlier Outages
Friday’s failure is the second time in twelve months that Optus emergency calls have failed, and the regulator is already suing the company over the first.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority has proceedings against Optus in the Federal Court over a network outage in September 2025. That outage ran almost 14 hours and has been linked to two deaths.
A review by Kerry Schott found that 75 per cent of triple zero calls failed out of 605 attempts during that outage. That outage is the subject of the ACMA’s Federal Court case, and the Schott review remains the closest thing to an independent assessment the sector has had.
The federal government strengthened regulatory powers after the earlier triple zero failures, and telcos now face greater scrutiny and potential civil penalties.
The pressure is not only on Optus. On 8 July 2026, a nationwide Telstra outage left 604 triple zero calls unable to connect and forced 639 welfare checks, with seven people needing assistance after initially failing to connect.
Communications Minister Anika Wells pledged at the time to “hold Telstra’s feet to the fire”. Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady apologised and said: “We will complete our investigation into the actions needed to prevent it from happening again.”
Optus also had a separate disruption in Melbourne in November 2025 that affected about 14,000 customers.
If a call fails, handsets should automatically try another network. Users are advised to retry and stay on the line for up to a minute while the device searches, which can mean a moment of silence before the call connects.
What Happens Next
Three matters remain outstanding after Friday’s failure. The ACMA’s Federal Court proceedings against Optus continue. The Triple Zero Custodian and the ACMA will examine whether the company met its obligations during the outage, and Optus has its own review.
It is not yet known what the regulators will conclude, what Optus’s review will cover, or when it will report. It is also not yet known whether the regulator will take action over Friday’s outage itself.
More than 40 callers had trouble reaching triple zero in a 75-minute window on Friday. Twelve months earlier, 605 attempts ran through an outage that lasted almost 14 hours. The courts and the regulators will now consider what has changed in the network since.
Sources: Optus statement, 11 September 2026; ABC News, “Victoria Police conduct dozens of welfare checks after Optus outage”, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-12/optus-outage-emergency-services/107146350; Nine.com.au, “Multiple triple zero calls affected by another Optus outage”, https://www.nine.com.au/australia-news/mutiple-triple-zero-calls-affected-by-another-optus-outage-20260912-p60wqg.html; The Nightly, “Optus under fire as emergency calls fail in fresh outage”, https://thenightly.com.au/australia/optus-outage-hits-triple-zero-calls-across-victoria-south-australia-tasmania-and-northern-territory-c-22860089
Photo: Bidgee, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Illustrative: an Optus transmission tower in Melbourne. The article reports a 75-minute Optus voice outage on 11 September 2026 in which more than 40 callers had trouble reaching triple zero.
