The story
AUSSAT and deregulation (1981–1990)
Optus can trace its beginnings back to the formation of the Government-owned AUSSAT Pty Limited in 1981. In 1982, Aussat selected the Hughes 376 for their initial satellites, with the first, AUSSAT A1, launched in August 1985. AUSSAT satellites were used for both military and civilian satellite communications, and delivering television services to remote outback communities.
With Aussat operating at a loss and with moves to deregulate telecommunications in Australia, the government decided to sell Aussat, coupled with a telecommunications licence. The licence was sold to Optus Communications – a consortium including:
logistics firm Mayne Nickless (24.99%);
UK telecommunications company Cable & Wireless (24.50%);
US telecommunications company BellSouth (24.50%);
AIDC Limited (10.00%);
insurance and investment company AMP (10.00%); and
insurance and investment company National Mutual (6.02%).
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The new telecommunications company was designed to provide competition to then government owned telecommunications company Telecom Australia, now known as Telstra.
Founding of Optus (1991–present)
Optus gained the second general carrier licence in January 1991.
After privatisation, AUSSAT became Optus and its first offering to the general public was to offer long-distance calls at cheaper rates than that of its competitor Telstra. The long-distance calling rates on offer were initially available by consumers dialing 1 before the area code and phone number. Following this, a ballot process was conducted by then regulator AUSTEL, with customers choosing their default long-distance carrier. Customers who made no choice or did not respond to the mailout campaign automatically remained as a Telstra long-distance customer. Customers who remained with Telstra could dial the override code of 1456 before the area code and phone number to manually select Optus as the carrier for that single call. Since 1 July 1998, consumers have the choice of preselecting their preferred long-distance carrier or dialling the override code before dialling a telephone number.
The group began by building an interstate fibre optic cable and a series of exchanges between Optus' interstate network and Telstra's local network. It also laid fibre optics into major office buildings and industrial areas, and focused on high bandwidth local, (interstate) long distance, and interstate calls for business. In its early years, Optus was only able to offer local and long-distance calls to residential customers through Telstra's local phone network. Telstra would carry residential to residential calls to Optus' exchanges, and then the calls would be switched to Optus' long-distance fibre optic network.
In 1993 Optus, along with Telstra and Vodafone were licensed by the regulator Austel (now the ACMA) to provide 2G GSM mobile telephony. Optus's mobile service launched in May of that year.
In 2024, Singtel held advanced talks with Brookfield to sell a 20% stake in Optus. Brookfield and Singtel were unable to agree on terms, with Singtel claiming afterwards it remained committed to Optus and the Australian market.
Incidents and controversies
At 8:00am on 16 July 2008 a wide-ranging outage affected customers in Queensland and Northern NSW. Customers of Optus, iiNet, 3 Mobile and Virgin were reported as down. Examples of services affected included Brisbane Airport, public transport, hospitals, landlines, ATM's and EFTPOS. The fault occurred as a result of a fibre optic cable at Molendinar being severed by earthworks, and the inland fibre path via Stanthorpe had failed the night prior. Partial restoration of services occurred at 12:30pm.
The same cited article also mentions brief detail of 1,800 ADSL and DSL services experiencing an outage in January of the same year due to the carrier's Moorooka exchange.
In 2014 Telstra successfully argued an Optus TV campaign was misleading about its coverage.
During the 2018 FIFA World Cup, its Optus Sport streaming service suffered widespread outages that left subscribers unable to view matches; chief executive Allen Lew apologised, temporary simulcasts were arranged with SBS, and subscriptions were made free with refunds offered to affected customers.
In April 2018, Optus removed and investigated a Neutral Bay retail job ad that improperly expressed a preference for "Anglo-Saxon" applicants.
In February 2019, the Federal Court imposed a $10 million penalty after Optus admitted misleading customers charged via its Direct Carrier Billing service for unwanted digital content, with hundreds of thousands refunded.
In September 2025, Optus paid a $100 million penalty in response to a court order that it had engaged in "unconscionable conduct" by recommending products that customers could not afford, did not want or could not use. Such customers were unemployed, homeless, had a disability or did not speak English as their first language. First Nations people from regional areas were also targeted.
2022 cyberattack
Around 22 September 2022, Optus systems sustained a significant cyberattack that resulted in a major data breach of both current and former customers' personal information, including customers' names, dates of birth, phone numbers and email addresses, with a smaller subset of customers having their street addresses, driving licence details and passport numbers leaked. Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin urged customers to exercise "heightened awareness" regarding transactions with their Optus and other accounts. Rosmarin emphasised that passwords were not compromised. The CEO said that the "worst-case scenario" regarding the number of customers whose data had been leaked was 9.8 million customers, but believes the actual number to be far lower.
On 24 September 2022, Australian news outlets The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Optus was investigating the authenticity of a ransom demand of US$1 million made on a hacking forum. The demand gave Optus one week to pay the ransom in cryptocurrency else the data will be sold for US$300,000 to whoever else wants it.
On 6 October, the Australian Federal Police announced the arrest of a 19-year-old man who had allegedly threatened 93 Optus customers by saying that he would use their information leaked in the attack to commit financial crimes, unless they paid AUD $2,000.
In response to the cyberattack, the Australian federal government announced an emergency regulation on 6 October, in the form of a 12-month amendment to the Telecommunications Regulations 2021 to "enable telecommunications companies to temporarily share approved government identifier information with regulated financial services entities."
On 11 October, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner launched an investigation, the aim of which is to explore the company's handling of customers' data.
2023 nationwide outage
Early on 8 November 2023, an undetermined issue caused a nationwide outage in Optus Mobile and Fixed Internet services. The outage directly impacted more than 10 million customers, including government services, hospitals and businesses. Optus Mobile customers reported that their phones showed 'SOS only' on the signal indicator, which is a sign the regular network is down, but mobile phones still have access to alternate networks in the event of an emergency call by using a so-called camping mechanism; however, Optus landlines were unable to make Triple Zero (000) emergency calls. The outage affected the communication systems for Melbourne's train network, so for safety reasons the whole network was halted until backup communications commenced, leading to major delays and cancellations throughout the day.
2025 emergency services outage
Starting approximately 12:30 am on 18 September 2025, Optus experienced an outage affecting callers on its network being able to access the Triple Zero emergency services calling system. Approximately 600 calls to Triple Zero made from the Northern Territory, South Australia, Western Australia and New South Wales failed and were not camped off to another network. A technical fault in a firewall upgrade resulted in the network incorrectly blocking Triple Zero calls until at least 1:50 pm, at some point shortly after Optus reverted the change.
At least four people were found to have died after being unable to contact emergency services during the outage: an eight-week-old boy and 68-year-old woman from South Australia, and a 49-year-old and 74-year-old man from Western Australia. The death of the eight-week-old is not believed to be contributed to by the outage, while investigations are continuing around the other three. The company has received significant criticism for its handling of the outage, including not notifying emergency services that people were unable to contact Triple Zero for at least 9 hours, delays in providing government authorities with details of failed calls, and holding press conferences announcing the deaths of callers prior to alerting authorities. Multiple government regulators and police services as well as Optus have announced independent investigations into the outage and the company's handling of it.
On 28 September, Optus experienced a separate outage in Dapto, New South Wales in which nine calls to Triple Zero did not connect due to a failed mobile phone tower.
On 5 November, Optus experienced a widespread issue in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. It included regions such as Port Stephens and Maitland. The issue lasted from 5:10 pm to 5:55 pm.
From Wikipedia’s article on Optus, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3