00:02It's been almost a year since a widespread Optus outage left hundreds of people unable to connect to Drupal Zero,
00:09a failure linked to two deaths.
00:11What has happened is completely unacceptable. We have let you down.
00:16Early Friday afternoon, the network went down again.
00:20Calls dropping out for Optus customers in parts of Victoria, SA, Tasmania and the NT for about an hour and
00:2715 minutes.
00:27In three states, welfare checks were conducted on callers trying to contact Drupal Zero.
00:33No adverse outcomes have been reported.
00:35The reality is that every person that calls Drupal Zero that can't get through, that could cost somebody's life.
00:41And it's not just Optus under fire. A nationwide Telstra outage in July also impacted Drupal Zero calls.
00:47Customers now losing patience.
00:50They just need to probably take a bit more responsibility for it, the companies, and make sure it doesn't happen.
00:55I feel very, very sad for people who are caught in that.
00:59When people make a call to Drupal Zero, for that to not go through is really terrifying.
01:03The communications minister says telcos have a legal obligation to ensure people can call Drupal Zero in their time of
01:10need.
01:10A review into last year's Optus outage uncovered crucial mistakes, including a failure to escalate warnings, slowing down resolution of
01:18the problem.
01:19Optus says it identified this issue within minutes, but a third major outage within 12 months again raises broader questions
01:27about the reliability of Australia's largest telco networks.
01:31We will be urgently taking those issues up with both the telcos but also the Commonwealth.
01:39The Australian Communications and Media Authority will investigate the outage.
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