Transcript: ATA CEO Luke Coleman on NBN News Newcastle 6/11/25
Presenter
The Coalition is calling for more to be done to protect the Triple Zero network. Yesterday more than a dozen calls to it were affected. Three cables cut at Hexham, 34,000 Optus customers cut off.
Luke Coleman
The perpetrator has gone into a pit where they’ve cut multiple fibre lines. Normally there would have been a backup service available, in this case there wasn’t.
Thankfully though, the telcos were able to act very quickly.
Presenter
Workers on site late yesterday to bring affected customers across 18 postcodes back online as police combed the scene.
Luke Coleman
In total the network was down for less than 12 hours and everybody was back online before 9 p.m. last night.
Presenter
But not before 13 people who called Triple Zero couldn’t get through. Optus this morning confirmed it had completed welfare checks and thankfully:
Luke Coleman
Everybody is safe and sound.
Presenter
But customers have been quick to complain online. One saying “my entire family of seven were without any service internet and calling or texting from early morning until late afternoon.”
Another adding: “I had the outage and missed calls from my doctor” and “I truly think we should get a huge discount on our bills”. The shadow communications minister is calling for the government to think twice before renewing Optus contracts.
Shadow Minister for Communications
It’s questionable that telecommunications providers can get large multi-million dollar contracts at the same time as getting large multi-million dollar fines.
Presenter
This latest incident follows a Senate hearing into the deadly Optus outage in September.
Premier of NSW, Chris Minns
As it stands today it’s not good enough and you can’t have a situation where people feel that they can’t call Triple Zero because lives will be lost if it continues.
Presenter
Police say they’re working to determine who’s behind the malicious damage and are again urging anyone with information phone or dashcam footage to come forward.
Shadow Minister for Communications
If you can cut some cables at one of our, you know, major infrastructure points, what can happen across the country? I s a risk to our whole infrastructure system.
Nationals Senate Leader Bridget McKenzie
We want to see Labor step up to the plate hold Optus to account.
Presenter
Optus today declined to comment.
