Optus to face ‘significant consequences’ over fatal outage

Optus should “expect significant consequences” over its Triple Zero outage, Communications Minister Anika Wells has warned, as she said the telco had “perpetuated an enormous failure on the Australian people”.

Wells, speaking in Brisbane on Monday, said an investigation into last week’s system outage linked to multiple deaths would be a priority, but that the company’s performance was ultimately “not good enough”.

Communications Minister Anika Wells earlier this month.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“Our focus is getting to the bottom of what went wrong before we determine what happens next, but Optus will be held to account,” Wells said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he would be “surprised” if Optus chief executive Stephen Rue was not considering resigning from his position after last week’s outage.

“Optus has obligations, as do other communications companies, and clearly they haven’t fulfilled the obligations that they have,” Albanese told the ABC from New York.

“What we want is to ensure that something like this shouldn’t happen.

Optus chief executive Stephen Rue at a press conference on Sunday.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

When asked if Rue should be considering his position, he said: “I would be surprised if that wasn’t occurring.”

“That is [why] … we want to see the investigation take place.”

On Sunday, Optus confirmed at least five customers tried to warn it about the Triple Zero outage now linked to multiple deaths, but call centre operators did not escalate those concerns because there were no “red flags” in the beleaguered telecommunication giant’s system.

Rue on Sunday revealed the outage had affected two emergency calls made by NSW residents near the South Australian border.

As pressure mounted on Rue over why Optus waited 40 hours to inform the public about the Triple Zero failure that affected 600 customers, he said that a review of call logs had found a further three customers contacted Optus to warn it about the outage, in addition to the two customers who had made earlier warnings to the company.

But Rue said those warnings were ignored because the company was not already aware of the problem.

“As we had not detected the Triple Zero failures in our network at the time of these calls, there were no red flags for the contact centre to alert them to any issue,” he said on Sunday. “This is clearly not good enough.”

Rue said on Sunday Optus would now implement a compulsory “escalation process” for any reports of Triple Zero failures.

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Optus has said it will appoint an independent reviewer to examine how a routine firewall update triggered the failure of the Triple Zero network and why there were no systems in place to alert it to the problem.

Telecommunications analyst Paul Budde said: “The bigger picture goes beyond Optus.

“This tragedy exposes systemic weaknesses in Australia’s telecoms sector. The industry has resisted national roaming and network gateways for decades, prioritising competitive advantage over resilience. Now, with lives at stake, that argument is no longer tenable.

“Triple Zero is sacred. Optus will need to show not just apologies but concrete action: transparent audits, redundancy investments, and a willingness to co-operate on national solutions.”

More to come

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