Optus, one of the country’s telecommunications monopolies, is taking a beating right now. This follows an unprecedented network failure that disabled critical emergency services. This major outage, which lasted 13 hours on September 18, dropped hundreds of triple-0 calls—the Australian emergency number. Tragically, four people died while trying to cross during this very important window of time. This was the case of an eight-week-old baby when her urgent call for help was ignored.
Yuen Kuan Moon, the chief executive of Singtel, admitted in public on the disruption. Singtel owns a controlling interest in Optus. That’s why he met with Communications Minister Anika Wells in Sydney on September 30 to start to repair the damage. A problematic network update led to a catastrophic technical failure. This made many of these triple-0 calls non-responsive, leading to tragic outcomes for the families who called.
Government Response and Accountability
In response to this calamity, Communications Minister Anika Wells moved quickly to make sure of it. She directed Optus to hire an independent, external third party to do a full review of its systems. This review is intended to protect against future outages that will place lives in danger.
Minister Wells wants accountability and she makes that clear in talks with Optus CEOs (60 mins) “I understand the anger, frustration, and outrage by what happened,” said Lawrence Wong, Singapore’s Prime Minister. He sent his deepest sympathies to the families affected by the outage. He maintained that he expects Optus to leave no stone unturned in its cooperation with police and regulators as the investigation continues.
“And I would like to certainly extend my condolences to everyone who’s been impacted by the outage, especially the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives.” – Lawrence Wong
Wong pointed out that Temasek Holdings — which is wholly owned by the Singapore government — has a 51 percent stake in Optus. He added that Singapore does not try to dictate the company’s commercial decisions. He repeated the call for corporate accountability, specifically for the need for subsidiaries to operate responsibly on an international level.
Previous Incidents and Future Precautions
This recent outage is just one in a long line of massive failures for the Australian telecom giant, Optus. After all, a similar outage two years ago drove some to lose confidence in their services after another long outage. Optus is committing to implement new technical measures to avoid similar outages in the future. They intend to build on their new operational protocols with this strategy.
September looks like it was a rough month for Optus. Just two days later, on the 28th, a second outage took place, this time downing service for thousands of customers in Dapto, New South Wales. These consistent breakdowns have led elected leaders and customers alike to demand immediate changes at the company.
John Arthur, a rep from Optus Australia, highlighted the need for outside perspectives in tackling these issues.
“We are always welcome to external perspectives and external views, and that remains the case here.” – John Arthur
To that end, he praised the company’s desire to partner with government agencies and third-party reviewers to address any failures.
A Call for Change
As the investigation continues, stakeholders are right to look at how Optus will change its operational framework to regain the trust of the public. The shocking deaths that resulted from the triple-0 outage have sparked deep concerns. Millions are currently re-evaluating the reliability of emergency response systems that are based on telecommunications infrastructure.
