Telstra has apologised for a technical issue that meant Australians were not able to speak to trained triple zero call takers for more than an hour.
The telecommunications giant issued the apology to people who were unable to make phone calls to triple zero for more than an hour on Friday morning.
Telstra receives all triple zero calls before transferring them to local emergency services – but between 3.30am and 5am on Friday, Telstra was unable to immediately transfer 148 of 494 calls, the chief executive, Vicki Brady, told reporters.
One of those calls involved a person who suffered a cardiac arrest and died, Brady said.
The Victorian Ambulance Union secretary, Danny Hill, described the incident as distressing for everyone involved. The patient died after an unsuccessful resuscitation effort, and the person who rang triple zero received a call back after the patient had died.
“About an hour after … the crew had originally arrived and had been there working on the patient, they received a phone call saying do you still need an ambulance?” Hill told ABC radio.
The 90-minute disruption was described by paramedics as “complete chaos”, with crews dispatched to cases with no details of the emergencies, Hill said.
Telstra staff manually took down details from triple zero calls to send to emergency services by email, Brady said.
“We followed our backup process exactly as they are designed but it is clear already from our preliminary review that there are improvements that we can make in these processes,” she said.
The telco is investigating what caused its servers to not work as intended.
“I … offer my deepest apology to the family of that person and in fact anyone who was impacted in those 90 minutes,” Brady said.
“I haven’t yet had a chance and [it is] not appropriate yet to reach out to that family but clearly we don’t yet understand how much the delay was and how much that impacted,” she said.
“But obviously it’s unacceptable if there was any delay in getting that call through.”
The Australian Communications and Media Authority is undertaking an “initial assessment” of the situation, specifically looking at Telstra’s “compliance with regulatory obligations”, the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, said.
“The Australian Communications and Media Authority is undertaking an initial assessment of Telstra’s compliance with its regulatory obligations,” Rowland said.
“The government understands that one of the impacted callers to triple zero has passed away. We are deeply saddened and our thoughts are with their family and friends.”
