Optus and SA Police differ over Triple Zero risk after Angaston base station fault
A hardware fault at an Optus base station in Angaston, in South Australia's Barossa Valley, knocked out mobile voice and data, and police warned it may have blocked emergency calls. Optus said other carriers covered the area, while police stood by their warning.
A hardware fault at an Optus base station in Angaston, in the Barossa Valley, took down mobile voice and data services for local residents. Police issued a warning that the outage may have stopped people from reaching emergency services.
The accounts from Optus and police diverged. Optus said the area was covered by other telcos, so triple-0 calls would still have connected. Police kept their original warning in place and said they were told the outage had been resolved nearly an hour later. Optus eventually fixed the fault.
The incident follows an Optus outage in November 2023 that led to tighter federal laws. Those laws require telcos to give real-time outage information to the government and emergency services. The source also refers to a 2025 Optus outage that lasted 14 hours and resulted in two deaths, and says an independent report recommended sweeping changes to Optus' network management.