The Australian government will investigate the triple zero call outage on Friday morning that left callers unable to call emergency services after a fire damaged a fibre cable in regional New South Wales.
The damage is believed to have been caused when lightning struck a cable between Orange and Bowral that's operated by Telstra for triple zero emergency calls. Some mobile services and triple zero calls were unavailable between about 2am and 5am on Friday morning in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia as a result.
The Department of Communications issued a statement confirming it would investigate the outage.
"The Department of Communications is conducting the investigation into the network outage which impacted the delivery of calls to triple zero on the 4th of May," a spokesperson told ABC News.
"The Department will seek information from Telstra and assistance from the [Australian Communications and Media Authority] in the conduct of the investigation."
Telstra chief executive Andy Penn also issued an apology for the outage, explaining that a lightning strike was responsible for damaging routers, which were restored at about 5am.
"We had a particular set of circumstances here which has affected some services and for that I deeply apologise," Penn said.
The investigation follows as reports of some people unable to contact emergency services emerge.
A Sydney couple were forced to dash to the nearest fire station after an electric blanket caught fire in their home and they could not call emergency services, according to a News Corp report.
An electric blanket sparked a destructive fire in Redfern this morning. With winter on the way, this footage is a timely reminder to turn off your electric blankets before leaving home or getting into bed. pic.twitter.com/fTrwSGPcn1
— Fire & Rescue NSW (@FRNSW) May 4, 2018
Another report from ABC News said a woman was unable to call emergency services after a car accident in Hawthorn on Saturday morning.
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