Optus’s chairman says the telecommunications giant will impose financial penalties and “termination in appropriate cases” against staff it believes are accountable for a 14-hour Triple Zero outage in September 2025, which has been linked to multiple deaths.

The comments from John Arthur came on 18 December 2025, when Optus publicly released an independent review by Dr Kerry Schott it had commissioned into the incident, which saw hundreds of Triple Zero calls fail in part of its network on 18 September.

Around 75 per cent of the more than 600 Triple Zero calls made through part of the Optus network failed during the outage following a botched firewall update by the telco and its network partner Nokia, the report said.

The incident was initially linked to four deaths, but Optus said it had since been told by police that only two fatalities were linked to its Triple Zero issue.

“I have made it clear the Optus failures were unacceptable,” Arthur said in a statement upon the report’s release.

“The board is taking further action in relation to individual accountabilities flowing from the incident, which will extend from financial penalties through to termination in appropriate cases.”

Arthur did not specify which Optus employees or teams would be held accountable with such penalties.

James Perkins, national assistant secretary of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), told Information Age that while the Schott review did not recommend Optus staff lose their jobs over the incident, company bosses needed to be held responsible instead of more junior staff.

"When decisions at the highest level impact Australians at their greatest moment of need, the fundamental ways in which Optus operates needs to be heavily scrutinised and those at the top need to be held accountable,” Perkins said in a statement.

"We will do everything to ensure Optus is held accountable and doesn't shirk its responsibilities by placing blame at the feet of its employees."

Optus CEO Stephen Rue, who has resisted external pressure to resign, said the Schott review highlighted “the need to accelerate” key reforms at the company.

He said many changes had already begun since he took over the chief executive role in 2024 following Optus’s major 2022 data breach and one-day nationwide outage in 2023.

“Australia deserves world-class emergency call services,” Rue said in a statement.

“We are working closely with government, regulators, and the wider telecommunications sector to enhance the reliability of the Triple Zero service for our customers.”

Optus pledges to ‘move swiftly’ on Schott recommendations

Optus said it agreed with all 21 recommendations made in Schott’s review, which Arthur described as “a sobering read for everyone at Optus”.

He said the company’s board had “agreed to move swiftly" to implement the recommendations.

These included improving risk management, speeding up moving Optus’s Operations Centre onshore, conducting “incident management exercises” with staff, and informing customers their devices may take 40 to 60 seconds to connect to Triple Zero when ‘camping on’, meaning it uses another network if their usual one is not available.


Optus says it agrees with all 21 recommendations made in Dr Kerry Schott's review. Image: Shutterstock

Australia’s Triple Zero system has experienced recurring issues since the nation’s 3G networks were shut down, including problems with some mobile phone models being unable to connect to Triple Zero or to camp-on using other networks.

Schott said it was “puzzling” that camp-on procedures had not worked during the 18 September Optus incident, when 66 callers used camp-on successfully but “the majority of callers” did not.

“What emerged from the behaviour of devices at the time is that for many calls it may take 40-60 seconds to camp-on,” Schott wrote.

“In an emergency, people are unlikely to hang on for this length of time, especially when the only response they are getting is silence on the line.

“There were calls from the same mobile phone models and types that were both successful and unsuccessful.”

Optus faces Senate inquiry, ACMA investigation

A Senate inquiry into issues with Australia’s Triple Zero system is expected to recall executives from Optus and its Singaporean parent company Singtel to give further evidence in early 2026.

Rue, Arthur, and other Optus representatives gave evidence to the inquiry in November, and said staff had failed to escalate information regarding the severity of the 18 September outage.

The inquiry’s chair, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, said Optus “must face serious consequences” for its failures.

“The government must now review Optus's licence and licence conditions,” she said in December following the release of the Schott review.

“Going soft on the telco is not an option.

“The government must lead an urgent review into the camp-on provisions that also failed in this incident.

“It is simply not good enough to have calls taking 40-60 seconds to connect and this needs urgent action.”

Industry regulator Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is also investigating whether Optus’s September outage breached the telco’s emergency calling obligations.

The watchdog said in October that it would make its findings public once its investigation had concluded.