MELBOURNE – An Australian judge fined telecommunications giant Optus 100 million Australian dollars ($66 million) Wednesday for unconscionable conduct selling services to hundreds of vulnerable customers including in Indigenous communities outside the range of its coverage.

The subsidiary of Singapore government-owned Singtel is separately facing multimillion-dollar fines over its failure last week to connect hundreds of emergency calls due to an outage that’s been linked to four deaths.

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Federal Court Justice Patrick O’Sullivan approved a plea agreement struck between Optus, Australia’s second-largest telecom, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission over unconscionable conduct and inappropriate sales practices spanning four years until July 2023.

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