Australian Communications and Media Authority only told of deadly Optus outage failure 10 hours after resolution

Optus failed to notify a key government stakeholder of Thursday’s deadly outage event until after it had been resolved in another stunning revelation of a widespread communications breakdown from the embattled telco. Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) chair Nerida O’Loughlin, speaking to reporters alongside Communications Minister Anika Wells on Monday morning, said she and her team had only found out about the fatal event 10 hours after it had already been resolved. “In this case we didn’t know that something had gone wrong until the matter had been resolved more than 10 hours later,” she said. She added the emails ACMA had received from the telco were “perfunctory” but some “were inaccurate”. “As part of our investigation, we need to look at just what information they need to provide to all of us when they can get it to us,” she said. “It was just too late.” ACMA is investigating the incident. Ms Wells said Optus had “failed the Australian people” and warned the telco would face “significant consequences” after the catastrophic outage, which impacted triple-0 calls. Four deaths have been associated with the event that struck NSW, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia on Thursday. Ms Wells said the telco notified her about the outage on Thursday via email. She said initial reports indicated about 100 calls were affected and she did not hear anything from the telco until later that afternoon with updated figures. “We were told the outage affected 100 calls,’ she said. “Then shortly after 4pm we were told the outage had affected 600 calls. “Then we found out from our department that there had been three deaths and we were told there would be a press conference from the CEO of Optus shortly.” She said the public had a right to “feel livid” about the outage and her focus was “getting to the bottom of what went wrong” and holding Optus to account. Ms Wells said there would be “significant consequences” and Optus would be held to account. “I will say it again for the people whose confidence must be shaken by what has come to light since late Friday afternoon, this is not good enough and it seems that Optus was told about this issue and did not act, which is not good enough,” she said. “Optus and all telecommunications providers have obligations under Australian law to make sure emergency services calls go through.” Ms Wells said this was the “second significant and egregious failure on the part of Optus”, though she said other telcos were not out of the clear. “But also other telecommunications providers have had triple-0 outages as well. This is not entirely a matter for Optus,” she said. The deadly outage started when the company conducted a firewall upgrade in South Australia about 12.30am on Thursday. Normal calls were not impacted but some triple-0 calls could not be made. The 13-hour outage then spread to WA, the NT and NSW. Optus chief executive Stephen Rue has confirmed that Australians dialled into Optus’ offshore call centres to warn the company of the outage, but workers at the centre failed to escalate the warnings. The company suffered a triple-0 outage in 2023 that impacted 2145 people. In response to the 2023 event, Optus implemented 18 government recommendations to prevent any future outages. Two triple-O calls in NSW were impacted and on Monday, NSW Health Minister Ryan Park said the government would review its systems to “prevent this from happening”. “This is a situation that concerns all of us,” he said. “In relation to those two callers from New South Wales who are close to the border, what I am advised is that one of them was a mistaken call and then one of them didn’t need an ambulance. “Both were checked in, given welfare checks by NSW Police and were checked so there wasn’t any impact on our patients or on our community. “That doesn’t mean that this isn’t concerning for every emergency service across the country. It certainly is. We’ll have further discussions this week with both Telstra, from our perspective, and NSW ambulance.”