Confidence shaken: telco will face serious consequences
Kat Wong and Alex Mitchell |
Optus will be held accountable after a serious triple-zero outage, as the role of private companies in delivering emergency calls is reconsidered.
Pressure is continuing to mount on the telco giant after it experienced a major outage that has been linked to up to four deaths, including that of a newborn baby.
It’s the second time in two years an Optus network issue has prevented Australians from accessing the emergency line, fuelling anger over its failure to implement the recommendations from a review into the first major outage.
Federal Communications Minister Anika Wells said Optus would face the consequences of its actions.
“This is the second significant and egregious failure on the part of Optus,” she told reporters on Monday.
“They have perpetuated a failure upon the Australian people with what has happened here, and they can expect to suffer significant consequences.”
Optus was slapped with more than $12 million in penalties after its first outage and could be subject to similar fines again, communications watchdog chair Nerida O’Loughlin said.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority is investigating the latest incident and could also seek commitments from Optus to improve its processes.
Thursday’s outage, which Optus only publicised late on Friday, came 18 months after rival Telstra also failed to comply with emergency call rules during a triple-zero network disruption.
Asked about private companies’ responsibility for delivering emergency calls, Ms Wells said she would need to review the issue.
“This isn’t entirely a matter for Optus,” she said.
“We are now considering what needs to be done holistically or as part of legislative relief for the Australian people, given their confidence has been shaken.”
Optus has also been the subject of ire for a lack of timely and accurate communication over the outage.
Ms Wells said she received an email about the outage affecting 10 calls on Thursday afternoon.
Her office received no further information until 24 hours later, when it was told the outage had affected 600 calls.
It wasn’t until the department had gotten in contact that she found out about the deaths.
Optus chief executive Stephen Rue is facing calls to resign after revelations that a third of the 18 review recommendations stemming from the 2023 outage are yet to be implemented.
Speaking from New York, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Optus’s behaviour was “completely unacceptable”.
Federal Liberal MP Tim Wilson raised questions about Optus’s overseas call centres, including whether they were the ones managing triple-zero calls or if they had received initial complaints from customers about the network not working.
Early investigations into Thursday’s incident appeared to show that established processes were not followed.
A botched firewall update blocked hundreds of triple-zero calls from Optus customers in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
Mr Rue leaned on an independent investigation into the incident when asked how Optus could be trusted in the future.
“We will make the facts public, and I can assure you, we will be implementing everything,” he said.
Two customers contacted Optus call centres early on Thursday morning, before the outage was fixed after more than 13 hours.
A review uncovered three more calls over the issue but “red flags” were not raised because call volumes were normal, Mr Rue said.
An eight-week-old boy from Gawler West, north of Adelaide, was among the deaths linked to the fault.
But SA Police cautioned the outage was “unlikely to have contributed” to the boy’s death because his grandmother immediately used another phone to contact triple zero after her initial call failed.
The other deaths included a 68-year-old woman from the Adelaide suburb of Queenstown, a 74-year-old man from the Perth suburb of Willetton and a 49-year-old from the Perth suburb of Kensington.
AAP
