By Phoebe Pin and Cason Ho, ABC News
An illuminated sign is displayed in the window of an outlet for the Australian communications company Optus in Sydney on 9 November, 2023. Photo: DAVID GRAY / AFP
It's been two days since three people, including an eight-week-old baby, died after a devastating Optus outage caused hundreds of emergency calls to fail, but information about the incident remains scarce.
The incident was made public during a snap-media conference on Friday, with the telco blaming a technical fault identified in the process of a network upgrade.
Authorities and customers have been left dumbfounded and furious, given Optus was previously reprimanded for a similar outage two years ago.
So what went wrong and what does it mean for the telco going forward?
What we know
Optus has provided very little information about Thursday's outage, which caused the failure of 600 triple-zero calls across South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
Two deaths in SA and one in WA were linked to the incident.
SA Police said an eight-week-old boy from the town of Gawler and a 68-year-old woman from Queenstown.
What's not known is why only triple-zero calls were affected, and why emergency backups did not kick in.
University of Adelaide lecturer Mark Stewart - who has previously consulted for Telstra - said there were two potential points of failure.
"Its root cause was in a network upgrade, and a secondary failure in the emergency 'camp-on' capability that should have allowed people to use an alternative service provider," Stewart said.
"There is a long standing, worldwide trend for companies to inadequately resource the testing and disaster recovery planning associated with network upgrades."
Who knew what, and when?
It appears emergency services and state government were unaware of the outage - and its tragic outcomes - until Friday evening.
Western Australia's ambulance service claimed it was left in the dark and "had no briefing from Optus about any outage issues in recent days".
WA Premier Roger Cook said on Friday afternoon he had only been informed of the incident "a short time ago".
His South Australian counterpart, Peter Malinauskas, said Optus had not told the state government one of its own had died prior to last night's press conference.
"I have not witnessed such incompetence from an Australian corporation in respect to communications worse than this," he said.
SA Police said it was "not yet aware of the details of any of the deaths in SA as a result of the outage".
When pressed about the timing of the announcement and why the deaths had not been disclosed sooner, Optus head Stephen Rue could offer little clarity.
He said the telco had been working on "establishing the facts" and conducting welfare checks throughout the day.
Optus failed to do the latter in November 2023, when a nationwide outage disrupted thousands of emergency calls.
The communications giant was hit with AU$12 million (NZ$13.5) in penalties and subject to a formal review, which made 18 recommendations to prevent further incidents, with six yet to be fully implemented.
Optus chief executive Stephen Rue yesterday told reporters he shared the community's frustration that history appeared to be repeating.
"This should not have happened, we are doing a thorough investigation, I can assure you," he said.
Potential repercussions
It's understood Optus could face fines upwards of A$10m (NZ$11.2m) and may be liable for other legal penalties over the incident.
But Rue would not be drawn on potential repercussions for the telco, or compensation for those affected.
"Today is not about me, today is about the people who lost their lives," he said.
Griffith University business and retail expert Graeme Hughes said while telecommunications companies were heavily regulated, there was a need for further regulation to prevent outages.
"We need a transparent government inquiry into the telecommunication sector's infrastructure and emergency protocols, so understanding what has gone wrong here and a course of action so this never happens again," adjunct associate professor Hughes said.
"These, of course, were the words of Optus last time an outage happened - they promised us all that this would never happen again."
- ABC News
