Telstra boss Vicki Brady has apologized to the family of a Melbourne person who died during a “technical incident” that affected triple-0 services for more than an hour.
Several states were affected during the Friday morning outage, which affected 148 of nearly 500 calls between 3:30 a.m. and 5 a.m.
In one case, a person who went into cardiac arrest was unable to immediately connect their call to Ambulance Victoria and was found dead by paramedics.
Speaking to reporters, Brady shared his “deepest apology” to the family and anyone affected by the incident.
Telstra boss Vicki Brady has apologized to the family of a Melbourne person who died during a “technical incident” that affected triple-0 services for more than an hour.
He said the telecommunications giant would investigate whether there were “unacceptable” delays in forwarding the person’s call.
“Can I first offer my sincere apologies to that person’s family and anyone who was affected in the 90 minutes?” he said.
‘At this stage we are in the early stages of the investigation.
“I haven’t had the opportunity yet and it’s not yet appropriate to contact that family, but clearly we still don’t understand how much the delay was and how much it affected.”
During Friday’s issue, backup teams were forced to manually send call details to emergency services, who then returned the calls. Telstra has yet to confirm how many states and/or territories were affected by the issue, which will be investigated by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).
A spokesperson for Triple Zero Victoria said Telstra told them the outage lasted from approximately 3.30am to 4.40am.
The agency was told it could not transfer triple-0 calls to response agencies in several states, including Victoria.
“Throughout the outage, Telstra provided Triple Zero Victoria with details of callers who were responded to urgently,” he said.
Several states were affected during the Friday morning outage, which affected 148 of nearly 500 calls between 3:30 a.m. and 5 a.m.
In New South Wales, early reports from emergency services agencies suggested that no triple 0 calls were missed and calls for service were handled as normal.
NSW Ambulance was able to continue receiving and processing triple-0 calls.
There were no interruptions to Fire Rescue NSW’s automatic fire alarm systems and a Telstra operator was able to call three jobs directly to FRNSW.
A NSW Police spokesperson said the triple-0 command line interface (CLI) feature that captures the caller’s number could not be accessed between 3:40 a.m. and 5 a.m.
However, callers could still reach triple-0 operators and police could still respond to jobs.
The spokesperson said New South Wales Police were not aware of any issues arising from the outage and the situation had now been resolved.
Federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the ACMA would carry out an initial assessment of Telstra’s “compliance with its regulatory obligations”.
He also said the government was “deeply saddened” by the death of the triple-0 shocked caller.
“We are deeply saddened and our thoughts are with his family and friends,” he said.
‘We have sought information from Telstra, who are the designated emergency call person, to understand the full impact of the outage.
“ACMA will continue its investigations into this matter.”
