A quarter of Optus customers consider leaving telco after fatal Triple Zero outage

3 hours ago 3

A quarter of Optus’ 10.7 million Australian mobile customers have considered leaving the network because of its handling of last month’s Triple Zero outage, which was linked to the deaths of three people after more than 600 emergency calls failed.

The findings show the potential commercial damage to the telecommunications giant from the outage, which followed a critical outage of its entire network in late 2023 and a major hack the year before that left the Singapore-owned company with sluggish growth.

A quarter of Optus customers polled by this masthead said the outage had made them consider leaving the telco.

Optus’ handling of the 13-hour Triple Zero outage on September 18 was heavily criticised in the weeks that followed. The telco raised the alarm only after the incident was over, sending alerts to an incorrect email address at the Department of Communications as well as understating the severity of the crisis.

Despite the opposition launching a political attack on Communications Minister Anika Wells for her response to the outage after she highlighted she was fresh to the role and travelled to New York amid continuing disruptions to Optus’ network, voters were evenly split on the government’s handling of the matter.

A total of 36 per cent of people surveyed in the Resolve Political Monitor stated the government’s handling of the Triple Zero outage had been good or very good, while 37 per cent said it was poor or very poor and 27 per cent of people were undecided or neutral.

Australians also condemned the telco’s bungled handling of the hours-long failure, with 47 per cent of voters rating Optus’ performance as either poor or very poor, 30 per cent of people stating they were unsure or neutral and just 23 per cent of people assessing Optus’ handling of the issue as either good or very good.

Among Optus customers, 27 per cent said they had considered leaving because of the Triple Zero outage. Another 17 per cent said they were considering leaving for other reasons, and just 48 per cent said they had no plans to stop using Optus’ services.

The findings are contained in a survey of 1800 people, conducted for this masthead by polling firm Resolve Strategic, that took place from October 7 to 12 and has a margin of error of 2.3 per cent.

Optus reported income of more than $8.2 billion in Australia in 2023-24 but paid no tax in this country. A spokesman explained earlier this month that it was in a “negative tax position due to its infrastructure investments and operating expenses”.

The Resolve survey also found that 41 per cent of Optus customers thought the communications giant’s performance had been good or very good – compared to 15 per cent of non-customers. Just 33 per cent of non-Optus customers thought the government’s performance was good or very good, compared to 41 per cent of Optus customers.

The Triple Zero outage affected customers in South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, and led to the deaths of three people. Those who died included a 68-year-old woman from South Australia, and two men from Western Australia, aged 49 and 74. The death of an eight-week-old boy in South Australia had been linked to the outage, but police said initial investigations pointed to that not being the case. All the deaths are being examined by state coroners.

The disruption to the Triple Zero service was triggered by a firewall update during a routine network upgrade on Thursday, September 18. Bosses at Optus and its parent company, the state-owned Singaporean telecommunications conglomerate Singtel, blamed the outage on human error.

The survey is likely to ramp up pressure on Optus chief executive Stephen Rue who has been heavily criticised for his handling of the failure, including revealing it late on a Friday afternoon.

An Optus spokeswoman said the outage was unacceptable. The company was working to regain Australians’ trust by taking actions including commissioning an independent review, creating new processes to rapidly escalate reports of Triple Zero outages, daily system testing, setting up a dedicated internal team to respond to issues, and improving scans of emergency call volumes to detect problems.

“We are also working closely with government, regulators and industry partners to support broader reforms that will improve the resilience of the emergency call system,” the spokeswoman said.

“Optus is committed to transparency, accountability, and to restoring the confidence of our customers and the Australian community, and we will undertake critical reforms to continue to transform the business.”

Two investigations have been ordered, one by the government’s Australian Communications and Media Authority and the second by Optus’ board, which will be led by Kerry Schott, an NBN Co. director and former Sydney Water chief executive. Both will be made public.

A push by shadow communications spokesperson Melissa McIntosh to set up a third, parliamentary inquiry into the outage failed in the House of Representatives. It will almost certainly be established as a Senate inquiry when parliament returns on October 27.

And the government will press ahead with the creation of a tougher Triple Zero “custodian” to monitor telcos and restore trust in the network, a recommendation of the 2024 Bean review which had languished on the shelf under the previous minister. Legislation is to be introduced in the final parliamentary sitting weeks of 2025.

Wells has been criticised by the opposition for her handling of the outage and for flying to New York with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to promote Australia’s world-leading social media age restrictions, rather than remaining in Australia.

She summoned the heads of Telstra, Optus and TPG to Canberra after the outage to emphasise the critical nature of the Triple Zero network.

The company could face fines of more than $10 million and other legal penalties as a result of the outage, but McIntosh, who met the Optus CEO on Friday, is still demanding penalties for telecommunications companies be doubled.

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