Optus: Anger in Australia after telecom outage linked to deaths

The outage left hundreds of people unable to contact emergency services and has been linked to multiple deaths.

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The incident last week left hundreds of people across more than half of the country unable to call emergency services for 13 hours.

Optus - one of the country's two major providers - says at least three people died as a result, and its chief executive has apologised to their families and the public for the "completely unacceptable" failure.

The company is under fire for its delayed handling of the incident - the second such outage for the firm in two years - and the nation's communications regulator is investigating.

More than 600 calls to emergency services failed last Thursday, primarily coming from South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. At least two calls to triple-0 made from south-western New South Wales also did not connect.