Singapore’s largest telecom operator has apologised over an emergency services outage in Australia that was blamed for several deaths.
Singtel, the owner of Australian telecom Optus, issued the apology on Wednesday after hundreds of calls to Australia’s Triple Zero (000) emergency line failed during a major technical glitch last week.
The outage on the Optus network on Thursday was linked to the deaths of three people.
In a statement published on the website of the Singapore stock exchange, Singtel CEO Yuen Kuan Moon said the company was “deeply sorry” over the incident.
“Our hearts go out to the families and friends of those who have passed away and we know that Optus will get to the bottom of this matter,” Yuen said.
“We are working with the Optus board and management to ensure a thorough investigation of this incident to prevent any future recurrence.”
Yuen added that Singtel was committed to the “ongoing transformation” of Optus under CEO Stephen Rue, who took up the position in November.
“The Singtel Group has supported Optus by investing over A$9.3 billion [$6.1bn] in the past five years with a large proportion of that put to building network infrastructure across Australia, and will continue to invest as needed for Optus to provide reliable communication services to all Australians,” Yuen said.
Rue also offered an apology.
“There are no words that can express how sorry I am about the very sad loss of the lives of four people, who could not reach emergency services in their time of need,” he said.
Credit: aljazeera.com
