SINGAPORE, July 30 — Singtel has confirmed it is in talks with several parties over a possible sale of a stake in Optus, while its Australian telecoms business faces Federal Court proceedings over an emergency-call outage amid wider scrutiny of service failures linked to two deaths.

The Singapore-based group said today that discussions were under way but cautioned that there was no certainty they would result in a transaction, CNA reported.

It did not identify the parties involved or disclose the size of any stake under consideration.

Optus, Australia’s second-largest telecommunications provider, has been owned by Singtel since 2001 and remains one of the group’s largest overseas investments.

In the financial year ended March 2026, Optus generated about A$8.35 billion (RM23.8 billion) in operating revenue, accounting for roughly half of Singtel’s total revenue. That was up from A$8.2 billion a year earlier.

Singtel said in May that it was open to bringing in an Australian minority investor in the business.

Reuters reported in 2024 that Singtel had been in advanced talks to sell a significant stake in Optus to Brookfield Asset Management, although the company denied at the time that a deal was imminent.

The latest discussions come as Optus faces heightened scrutiny over two outages involving Australia’s emergency-call service. The incidents affected thousands of users and were linked to two deaths.

The fallout led to the departure of two senior executives, including the company’s finance chief.

Australia’s communications regulator said today that it had launched Federal Court proceedings against Optus Mobile over the September 2025 outage.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority alleged that Optus breached two legal obligations on 1,005 occasions by failing to provide access to the emergency-call service and ensure calls were carried to the relevant termination point.

The regulator is seeking penalties of up to A$250,000 for each contravention.

Optus acknowledged the proceedings in an emailed response to Reuters, saying it continued to invest in network resilience and strengthen its systems and processes.

Singtel did not respond to a request for further comment on the stake-sale discussions.