Optus, one of Australia’s largest telecommunications providers, has been thrust into the national spotlight after being hit with a record $66 million fine for what a federal court described as “appalling” sales conduct. The penalty, announced on Wednesday, September 24, 2025, follows years of mounting criticism over the company’s treatment of vulnerable customers and comes at a time when Optus is also grappling with the fallout from a catastrophic network outage linked to four deaths.
The federal court’s ruling paints a damning picture of Optus’ business practices between 2019 and 2023. During this period, the company sold products and services to customers—many of whom were Indigenous Australians living in remote communities—that they neither needed nor wanted. The result? Many customers, already on modest incomes, were left saddled with thousands of dollars in debt. As reported by multiple outlets, including AFP and Devdiscourse, the court found that these sales tactics targeted some of the nation’s most vulnerable individuals, often in areas where basic coverage was lacking.
Federal Court Justice Patrick O’Sullivan did not mince words in his assessment of Optus’ conduct. He called the company’s actions “extremely serious” and “appalling,” emphasizing the deep stress and embarrassment caused to consumers struggling to pay off debts they never should have incurred. According to AFP, Justice O’Sullivan noted, “Consumers incurred thousands of dollars of debt while on modest incomes and became embarrassed or stressed over how they would pay these.”
The $66 million fine—the largest of its kind for such conduct in Australia—was formally approved after Optus and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) reached an agreement in June 2025. The penalty is meant to send a clear message: predatory sales practices, especially those targeting marginalized communities, will not be tolerated. In a statement following the ruling, Optus acknowledged the severity of its actions, describing its sales practices during the offending period as “unconscionable conduct and inappropriate.”
Optus has pledged to change course. The company says it has overhauled its sales practices to better support all customers and is in the process of remediating those impacted by its past behavior. “Optus is remediating impacted customers as a matter of priority,” the company said in a statement, as cited by AFP. In a further gesture aimed at rebuilding trust, Optus has committed to donating $662,300 to programs that will improve financial literacy in Indigenous communities—a move widely seen as an attempt to address some of the harm caused.
This landmark fine, however, is only part of Optus’ current troubles. Just days before the court’s decision, the company experienced a major outage that left 600 people across South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory without service for at least ten hours. The outage, which prevented calls to emergency services, has been linked to the deaths of four people who were unable to reach help in their time of need. The incident has reignited public anger and raised urgent questions about the reliability of Australia’s telecommunications infrastructure.
In response to the tragedy, Optus announced it would launch an independent review to investigate the sequence of events that led to the emergency call failures. The company’s new chief executive, Stephen Rue, expressed deep remorse for the loss of life, stating, “There are no words that can express how sorry I am about the very sad loss of the lives of four people, who could not reach emergency services in their time of need.” This statement, reported by AFP, underscores the gravity of the situation and the pressure now facing Optus to restore public confidence.
The recent outage is not the first time Optus has faced scrutiny over its network reliability. In 2023, the company was fined $7.9 million after a nearly 12-hour outage brought its mobile and internet systems to a standstill. The Australian government is now investigating whether Optus’ Singapore-based parent company, Singtel, provided adequate funding to ensure network reliability. Despite a substantial AUD 9.3 billion investment from Singtel, the issues appear to have stemmed from procedural lapses rather than a lack of financial resources, according to Devdiscourse.
Optus’ woes have prompted broader questions about the responsibilities of major telecommunications providers in Australia, particularly when it comes to serving remote and Indigenous communities. The company’s sales tactics, which left many customers in debt for services they didn’t understand or require, have been widely condemned by consumer advocates. The ACCC’s involvement and the scale of the fine reflect a growing determination among regulators to hold companies accountable for exploiting vulnerable people.
For many Indigenous Australians living in remote regions, reliable telecommunications are not just a convenience—they’re a lifeline. The combination of aggressive sales tactics and network failures has left some of the country’s most marginalized citizens at risk, both financially and physically. The government’s ongoing investigation into Singtel’s role and the adequacy of its investment in Optus is expected to shed further light on how such failures were allowed to persist.
Optus, for its part, insists it is committed to reform. The company says it is “working to rectify customer impacts” and has emphasized ongoing investments to ensure reliable service for all Australians. Both Optus and Singtel have pointed to recent infrastructure spending as evidence of their commitment, but critics argue that money alone cannot fix a culture of neglect or restore the trust of those who have been harmed.
The events of the past week have left Optus at a crossroads. With regulators watching closely, public scrutiny at an all-time high, and the memories of preventable tragedies still fresh, the company faces an uphill battle to prove it has learned from its mistakes. Whether its promises of reform and restitution will be enough remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: for the vulnerable customers at the heart of this story, real change cannot come soon enough.
As the dust begins to settle, Australians are left to reckon with the uncomfortable truth that, in the digital age, the systems meant to connect us can also fail us—sometimes with devastating consequences.
