The under-fire telecommunications sector stands accused of covering up another death linked to a triple-zero failure that occurred days after a catastrophic Optus outage.
TPG Telecom chief executive Iñaki Berroeta on Tuesday said his company discovered another customer who was unable to call triple zero because their phone was not compatible with the 4G emergency network.
The person reached emergency services five minutes later via alternative means but are believed to have died after the September 24 call failure, he told a Senate inquiry.
The executive said he only learned of the suspected death on Monday, but Telstra chief Vicki Brady told the same inquiry her organisation knew about it the day it happened.
Despite intense publicity surrounding three deaths linked to a major Optus outage on September 18, the TPG-linked death six days later was not addressed publicly until the hearing on Tuesday.
Ms Brady said Telstra had never raised the death in meetings with Communications Minister Anika Wells, nor at a roundtable of telco chiefs held in October.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said she was “flabbergasted” no one within the industry ever declared another death had occurred.
“Not at one point in this did anyone within the industry want to fess up and say there’d been another death six days later,” she said.
“It’s a cover-up. You’re all looking after yourselves.”
The person lived in Wentworth Falls in the NSW Blue Mountains, although TPG was yet to confirm details of the incident with emergency services and could not provide further details before the inquiry.
Ms Brady said Telstra presumed TPG knew the individual had died.
“It was often referred to as ‘the Wentworth Falls incident’. We were working on the basis that everyone had the same information,” she said.
Ms Wells, who was in New York promoting the social media ban at the time of the death, has been contacted for comment.
It is the second death linked to services from TPG, which also operates the Vodafone and Lebara brands in Australia, after a customer failed to reach triple zero on November 13.
Early investigations into TPG’s November incident pointed to the customer’s ageing Samsung phone using software incompatible with making triple-zero calls.
“Even though it was a 4G device, when an emergency call was placed, they would go into the 3G technology at the time, where 3G networks were not going to be available,” Mr Berroeta said.
TPG has said it made regulators aware of the problem at the end of 2023 before the national 3G network shutdown.
Under Australian laws, telcos are required to block devices if they are unable to call triple zero.
About 18,000 TPG customers still had phones that could not access triple zero because they required a software update or an entirely new device, Mr Berroeta said.
“These devices will be progressively blocked in the coming weeks if no action is taken.”
Samsung has identified 11 phones needing replacement and another 60 requiring a software update to overcome the 3G network issue.
Anyone who has not done so within five weeks of receiving notice from their telco will have their handset blocked.
The Samsung-specific issue with the Vodafone network was discovered by Telstra and Optus in late October, a year after the two telcos turned off 3G.
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