Optus outrage: Review launched for telco failure linked to two SA deaths
Optus’s triple-zero outage is the subject of a federal review, with its CEO’s future being questioned. The SA Premier says it took too long for the government to be informed with a drop off in ambulance emergency calls flagging the problem.
The federal regulator, Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), has launched an investigation into Thursday’s Optus outage, which is linked to four deaths, including two South Australians.
SA Premier Peter Malinauskas spoke to Federal Communications Minister Anika Wells on Monday morning and said his government would work with the federal inquiry into the deaths that included a 68-year-old woman from the Adelaide suburb of Queenstown and an eight-week-old baby from Gawler West.
“As a starting point, if ACMA are conducting a thorough investigation, and they can put accountabilities on Optus and potentially substantial punishments, it might make sense for us just to feed into that,” Malinauskas told ABC Radio Adelaide.
Malinauskas said in the next few days his government would work with federal investigators to “make sure that the right questions are being asked and examined” and that the inquiry would draw on a previous investigation into Optus related to a 2023 outage.
“There were very strict recommendations they [Optus] were supposed to adhere to, and this seems to suggest that hasn’t occurred,” Malinauskas said.
Federal Minister Wells said at a press conference on Monday morning that “Optus will be held accountable for this failure”.
“They and all providers have no excuses here,” she said.
It was believed about a third of the 18 review recommendations stemming from the 2023 Optus outage, which resulted in fines totalling more than $12 million, were yet to be implemented, but Optus said in a press conference it could not confirm what had been implemented.
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The most recent outage began on Thursday morning and took more than 13 hours to fix, but ACMA Chair Neriga O’Loughlin said on Monday the regulator was not notified about the outage until after it was resolved.
She said when there was a significant outage, the regulator would typically receive multiple emails a day as soon as the telco was aware of the problem.
Malinauskas said Optus failed to advise his government for more than 10 hours after the outage, and that his government became aware after the SA ambulance service saw a drop off in the number of triple zero calls coming through on a particular line.
“What’s even more concerning about that sequence of events is that it now turns out that Optus knew as early as Thursday morning there were problems,” he said.
“So hours passed and then they didn’t let us know. We let them know.”
Malinauskas also said it was only after he called the Optus boss personally that Optus shared more details, including names, addresses and numbers of those affected, with SAPOL.
Early investigations into Thursday’s incident appeared to show established processes were not followed, with a botched firewall update blocking hundreds of triple-zero calls from Optus customers in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
The Premier said that while technical failures happen, what matters is how organisations respond to those technical challenges.
“In respect to like, the most critical of services, where Triple Zero is clearly an example, again, things will go wrong but if that happens, there has to be redundancies, there has to be protocols that get followed, and there has to be communications shared, and in the protocols and the communications, that’s where trust can be lost,” he said.
Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia joined the Premier in extending his sympathies to the families of those who died and called Optus’ failure to notify the government “unacceptable”.
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“A full, thorough and independent investigation is critical to ensure accountability and prevent such failures from happening again,” he said.
Tarzia has also called on the state government to review any current contracts it has with Optus and decide if they should continue.
Speaking from New York on Monday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said while the immediate concern is the investigation into the incident, he believed Optus’ behaviour was “completely unacceptable”.
“We will await the proper facts and will take what action is necessary,” he said.
When asked if Optus CEO Stephen Rue should consider his position as CEO, Albanese said he’d be surprised if that was not already happening.
As the prime minister labelled the fatal event “completely unacceptable”, Rue guaranteed Optus would not let a similar thing happen in the future.
His assurance came despite the barrage of criticism of Optus for failing to implement recommendations from a review into a similar national outage that crippled the network.
When asked how Optus could be trusted in the future after failing to implement recommendations from the previous outage, Rue leaned on an independent investigation into the incident.
“We will do an independent review, we will make the facts public, and I can assure you, we will be implementing everything,” he said.
“What I can assure you is that actions are and will be taken to ensure that this does not happen in future.”
Rue took over from former Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, who resigned in the wake of the 2023 outage.
A review uncovered three more calls over the issue but “red flags” were not raised because call volumes were normal, Rue said.
An eight-week-old boy from Gawler West, north of Adelaide, was among four deaths linked to the fault.
But SA Police said 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.
