Singtel-owned Optus’ mobile service outage affects about 120,000 users in Australia: Local media
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Public news service ABC said that 220,000 Optus customers were initially affected by the outage earlier on Feb 9.
PHOTO: REUTERS
About 120,000 users of Optus experienced mobile service disruptions in Australia on Feb 9.
Optus, Australia’s second-largest telecommunications company, confirmed it was aware of the issue, reported Australian news outlet news.com.au
In a statement reported by the outlet, Singtel-owned Optus said: “If customers see ‘No Service’ or ‘SOS’ on their device, they are advised to restart their phone to restore service.
“We are actively working with our partner Ericsson and have noticed a significant decline in the number of customers impacted.”
It added that customers are able to make emergency calls.
In response to The Straits Times’ queries, an Optus spokesperson said at around 8.15pm on Feb 9 that while it has “seen a further significant reduction in impacted customers, around 60,000 remain, with the majority of customers already having restored services after restarting their phones”.
Optus also apologised to impacted customers for the inconvenience.
The Optus outage comes after a technical failure on Sept 18, 2025, which contributed to the deaths of three people
The three had attempted to make emergency calls during the technical failure, which disrupted those calls. More than 600 people were unable to reach the police, the fire department and ambulance services.
A fourth death, that of an eight-week-old boy from an Adelaide suburb, was initially linked to the outage. But this was subsequently deemed unlikely because his grandmother had immediately used another mobile phone to reach emergency services.
On Sept 30, 2025, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the telecoms company had “let down the nation”.
Mr Albanese told reporters that Optus’ outage was an “unacceptable failure”.
In an interview with ABC released on Oct 6, 2025, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong expressed his condolences
PM Wong said: “As far as Singapore is concerned, while we may be shareholder through Temasek, we have always operated on a very clear cardinal principle that we do not get involved in commercial operations. We do not direct commercial matters.”
The telco suffered another service outage which impacted 14,000 users on Nov 26, 2025.
Singtel said in a statement to Reuters on Nov 27, 2025, that investigations showed the outage was caused by vandals who cut a fibre cable in Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne.
