Update on Dapto, NSW tower issue on 28 September 2025

• We continue to work closely with our technical partner Ericsson, whose equipment did not appear to operate as it should, to understand the root cause of the issue on a single mobile tower in the suburb of Dapto in NSW.

• Although the tower appeared active on the network, calls attaching to it were impacted and did not transfer to other networks.

• Initial assessments indicate that 5G services were operational at all times but 4G services were not, which prevented calls from connecting. Optus’ 5G does not currently carry voice services in Australia.

• Optus’ ability to detect the outage was impacted as the Ericsson equipment in the cell tower did not alarm that 4G services were not operational.

• At our request, Ericsson has undertaken a full health review of their elements of our network. This review found that what has occurred on this cell site is an anomaly they have not seen elsewhere.    

• We are assured by Ericsson that they have their global Product Development Unit urgently analysing this.

• To be clear, the tower is fully operational.

• This issue is unrelated to the 18 September Triple Zero incident. It was related to this cell site only and was not caused by any upgrade or maintenance activity.

Our priority is ensuring that Australians can rely on Optus when connecting to Triple Zero when it matters most and we would once again like to deeply apologise to people who were impacted.

We will continue to cooperate with government, regulators and industry partners to rebuild trust with our customers and the Australian community.

ON BACKGROUND:

• Ericsson is a major provider of radio technology to support Optus mobile towers and the core infrastructure that manages voice and data.
  

• The outage involved one tower out of more than 9000 Optus towers across Australia.
  

• As has been previously confirmed, one person requiring emergency assistance was affected by this issue but was able to successfully contact emergency services from another phone.
  

ENDS

Media contact: 
Optus Corporate Affairs 
02 9037 8179
media@optus.com.au