Australian network operator Optus suffered another network outage today (November 5), which may have again impacted its Triple Zero service.

Although the carrier reports that the service has since been restored, the outage is just one of multiple incidents it has faced in the last six weeks. The outage today is said to be due to a fiber cut, which caused thousands to lose access to Optus' network.

It comes as the company's CEO, Stephen Rue, faced questions from Australia's Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications over the September 18 outage, during which four people died and more than 600 customers were impacted.

Today's incident saw voice and data services impacted for 60,000 customers in New South Wales, while Optus also warned that the "ability to connect to Triple Zero may be impacted for some."

Triple Zero (000) is Australia's main emergency service phone number.

Newcastle Weekly reports that an investigation is underway into the malicious damage of a communications tower in Hexham, a suburb in New South Wales.

The publication said that the Newcastle City Police District responded to reports of an incident on Maitland Road about 3:15pm local time today. Police believe the vandalism took place at 9:30am.

Optus confirmed an investigation has been launched, noting that it had restored the service by 9pm.

"We have now restored services to all impacted sites, and we will continue to monitor the network. We sincerely apologize to our customers for the disruption and thank them for their patience," said Optus. "Welfare checks are continuing in relation to any failed attempts to connect to Triple Zero. NSW Police have confirmed an investigation has commenced regarding malicious damage."

Bad timing

Any outage is bad timing, but for Optus, it couldn't be worse.

The carrier is under heavy scrutiny for the September 18 outage, where it has been accused of acting slowly to cooperate with the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) about the fatalities.

That outage was followed by another emergency network outage later in the same month.

At the time, Optus stated that the incident centered around a mobile phone tower site in the Dapto area in New South Wales. The telco subsequently blamed network vendor Ericsson for that outage.

The outages have led to pressure on CEO Rue, who only took over the role last November, replacing Kelly Bayer, who resigned amid the fallout from a previous outage that lasted more than 14 hours in November 2023.

As such, the carrier was slapped with an AU$12 million (US$7.93m) fine. Its head of networks, Lambo Kanagaratnam, also quit months later.