Australia’s TPG Telecom says customer died after failed emergency call due to ‘outdated Samsung software’

AUSTRALIA’S TPG Telecom said on Tuesday a customer died after failing to make emergency triple zero (”000”) calls on the company’s network from a Samsung device that was operating out-of-date software.

At the time of the attempted contact to the triple zero service, TPG’s mobile network was operational and no outages were occurring, it said in a statement.

The incident comes just two months after two back-to-back emergency call outages at the country’s No. 2 carrier Optus affected thousands and were linked to the death of four people, sparking a parliamentary inquiry into the Singtel-owned company.

The first Optus glitch involved a botched network firewall upgrade that triggered a deadly 13-hour outage, while the second incident occurred after a faulty mobile phone tower site failed to detect that 4G services were offline.

TPG said on Tuesday that early investigations indicate the failed calls in Sydney on Nov 13 were due to the customer’s Samsung device operating on software that was not compatible with making emergency calls on the network.

The telco said it had notified customers using older Samsung devices to update the software on the impacted devices to allow emergency calling. TPG added it has also informed relevant government and regulatory bodies of the incident. AFP