September 29, 2025 • 17 mins
Optus has confirmed its second triple-zero outage in less than two weeks. The latest incident affected thousands of NSW customers, and it follows an outage linked to four deaths earlier in the month. So, what’s going on with our triple-zero system? In today's podcast, we'll unpack these latest outages and explain how Australia’s emergency call service works, who is responsible for it, and what happens when it fails.
Hosts: Emma Gillespie and Billi FitzSimons
Producer: Orla Maher
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Already and this is this is the Daily This is
the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Tuesday,
the thirtieth of September. I'm Emma Gillespie, I'm Billy fitz Simons.
Over the weekend, Optus confirmed its second triple zero outage
in less than two weeks. The latest incident affected thousands
of New South Wales customers and it follows an outage
linked to four deaths earlier this month. But Optus isn't
(00:36):
the only telco to report emergency call disruptions in recent years.
You might remember a high profile Telstra outage in twenty
twenty four. So what's going on with our triple zero system?
In today's podcast, we are going to unpack these latest
outages and explain how Australia's emergency call service works, who
is responsible for it, and what happens when it fails.
(00:58):
We'll get into all of that in too steep dive
right after a quick message from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
So, m OPTAs has been in the headlines a lot
this month, and I feel like there has been so
much going on that's kind of hard to know where
to start. But I think we should start with what
happened over the weekend, the last thing that has happened.
Do you want to tell us about that? Exactly?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
So the latest outage, the latest Opters outage was linked
to a mobile phone tower in the Woollongong suburb of
Dapto in New South Wales that affected around four and
a half thousand users in the area on Sunday between
three am and twelve twenty pm, so for over nine hours. Now.
OPTAs said it's reviewed nine failed calls to triple zero
(01:43):
during that time, including one instance where a caller required
an ambulance and used another phone to contact emergency services.
But the telco said that all of those who were
impacted are okay to use its own language and that
the issue has been fixed.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
And so, so the reason why this made such big
news is because it's actually the second outage this month.
Do you want to tell us about the first one?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yes? So. On September eighteenth, Optus experienced a technical failure
is what it called it, during a network upgrade. Now,
this failure impacted triple zero calls in large parts of
the country across multiple states, including South Australia, the Northern
Territory and Western Australia. There were also some calls in
New South Wales that were impacted, and that's because they
(02:30):
were closer to the SA border, so those calls relied
on South Australian mobile towers. Optus said that it happened
during a regular upgrade, so it was conducting a routine
upgrade in the early hours of the eighteenth of September,
a Thursday, and it said that its initial testing and
monitoring after that upgrade was rolled out didn't indicate any issues.
(02:53):
So on Optus's side, things all looked fine, but it
became aware of a problem when two customers contacted the
telcoat report that they couldn't contact Triple zero.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And how did Optus respond to that?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So, according to opt to CEO Stephen Rue, once it
was notified, quote, we stopped the upgrade, restoring Triple zero
and notified relevant stakeholders including police and government agencies. Approximately
six hundred calls were identified to have failed during that outage,
which lasted around thirteen hours, and once it had pulled
(03:26):
all the records from the network and had all the
call details of all the failed Triple zero calls, Optus
commenced welfare checks, So that involves reaching out to every
single person that tried to call Triple zero and couldn't.
And during those checks, the CEO, Stephen Rue, confirmed three
people had died after the household was unable to contact
(03:46):
emergency services.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
What do we know about those deaths?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
So the deaths include a sixty eight year old woman
from South Australia, a seventy four year old man in
Western Australia, and an eight week old boy. But we
have since heard from SA Police that while the family
of that baby was impacted by the outage, it's unlikely
to have contributed to.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
The death of the baby.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
So preliminary investigations by SA Police say that the grandmother
of the boy attempted to contact Triple zero using her phone.
When she couldn't get through, she immediately used another mobile
telephone in the house which did successfully connect to Triple zero.
A couple of days after the outage, we heard about
an additional death, a fourth death linked to this outage,
(04:33):
and that was reported in WA a forty nine year
old Perth man. His body was discovered by police during
a welfare check. That welfare check was triggered by his
failed call and do.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
We know what exactly caused this outage?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
So the Optus CEO has blamed the outage on human error,
basically what he has called an employee failure to follow
established protocols for a routine firewall upgrade. And we don't
have you know, a lot more than that. There's some
technical terminology around that failure, but I don't think it
changes the fact that this is a human error that
(05:11):
Optics is attributing the outage to. As for the most
recent outage, that one near Wollongong over the weekend, at
the time of recording, we don't actually know what happened.
OPTAs said it's continuing to investigate the cause of the issue,
but that service has been restored. So we don't know
what happened near Wollongong, but we do know that users
in that area can now contact Triple zero without any issues.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Okay, so we're still learning more about that most recent outage,
but the earlier one has been linked to for desk.
Like you said, what I've been surprised to learn about
this is that what telephone company you're with does actually
impact your ability to call Triple zero. And so I
guess my question is how does Australia's emergency call system
(05:56):
actually work? Like why is it connected to what tele
phone company you're is?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
So in a perfect situation, if everything is going smoothly,
it shouldn't actually matter who your telco is, and I'll
explain why. What's really important to understand is that Telstra
plays a huge role in our Triple zero service. It's
recognized by the federal government as the quote emergency call
person for triple zero, also for one one two. If
(06:23):
you call one one two, that's like the international emergency number,
no matter what country you're in, one one two will
connect you with the relevant emergency services.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Okay, wait pause, two things that I've learned. Yes, so
Telstra is, you said, the emergency contact person.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So that's what the kind of communications legislation, the Regulatory
Framework has designated as its title. But what that means
is that Telstra is responsible for providing the service that
answers calls two triple zero, oh see, and it transfers
them to the requested emergency service organization with relevant details.
(07:01):
So when a person calls triple zero, they will speak
to a Telstra operator who will designate their call to
emergency services. So that's the person that answers the call
and says, you know, do you need police, ambulance, firefighters?
What's going on?
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Are you? Saye?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
What do you need? And then they will pass that
information on to the relevant authority.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Got it? And then the second thing I learned, I've
never heard of one one two before.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yeah, this was something that I didn't know either. So
one one two apparently is the number if you are
overseas and you don't know the number for wherever you are,
it's one one too, not nine to one one.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Interesting, and does that mean that if you can't if
you are in the situation where there is an outage,
maybe you don't know that there's an adage, but for
some reason you're not able to call Triple zero, do
you then call one one two and it should work.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
If it's not working, as in these outages that we
are talking about today, if those systems aren't working, then
it doesn't matter if you call Triple zero or one
one two. So Telstra is the national operator of Triple zero,
regardless of which mobile network you're on. But this is
where it kind of gets a little bit more complicated.
Telstra operates the Triple zero service, but all mobile networks
(08:15):
have obligations to ensure your call can reach Telstra. So
if for whatever reason, you cannot connect to the network
that you're subscribed to, be that Optus Votera Phone TPG,
those telcos have an obligation to ensure that your phone
will attempt to roam and connect via another carrier's network.
(08:35):
This is called camping on. Bear with me because I
know it's a little bit complex, but basically, if your
home network, let's say you're an OPTI customer, If your
home phone she's voted, well, full disclosure, I am with
OPTAs still oh perfect. If your home network isn't working,
your phone should automatically connect to any available network for
(08:57):
emergency calls. So Optis, voter Phone, TPG, Telstra, they all
have a relationship where they work together to ensure that
this camping on procedure can work. And they work together
to make that work because they have to buy law.
So in Australia, those networks are required to take emergency
calls from customers of competing networks through that mechanism.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
But it's a camping on process that failed here, we think,
so okay to just recap where we are. Telstra is
responsible for the triple zero network. And so when anyone
who's with any telephone company calls triple zero, they are
speaking to a Telstra provider, a Telstra person.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yes, but Telstra's not responsible for the whole network. All
providers are responsible for the whole network.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Got it. They're just responsible for who you're speaking to
on the other side of the phone, exactly, got it.
But your provider, so that could be Optis in your case,
Votaphone in my case. They are responsible for making sure
that you can always reach triple zero. And if they're
not able to provide that or facilitate that, then another
(10:07):
network needs to be able to pick up your call. Exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
So those providers are responsible for ensuring customers can reach
triple zero, including through their network or through camping on procedures.
And Telstra are responsible for making sure that your call
will be answered by a person at a desk who
will facilitate passing it on to the relevant emergency services.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Got it. And so I guess the next question is
why did this camping on process, this fall back process
not work here?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
So Optus is still investigating why, But the problem seems
to be that the Optus network couldn't actually detect that
there was any issue, So testing in place after the
upgrade on that bigger outage appeared to show that everything
was working. Everything seemed fine as far as opters could tell.
So the specific part of the network that handles emergency
(10:57):
calls needs to know it's broken in order to activate
the camping on. So there needs to be a red
flag that says, Okay, this person has tried to call
Triple zero and they're not getting through with our cell towers,
so we need to put their call through a votaphone
tower or a Telstra tower over there. Optus, plainly, it seems,
didn't know that that issue was occurring. So last week
(11:19):
it announced an independent review into the technical failure on
the eighteenth of September that's the big one that was
linked to multiple deaths. It said. The review will quote
identify the causes and canvas the applicable processes, protocols, and
operations of the incident, and it will also examine the
operational management of Triple zero calls in the Optus network
(11:39):
and the actions that Optus took in response to the incident,
including whether or not it adhered to its legislative requirements,
So the findings from that are expected to be handed
down by the end of the year.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
I think it's fair to say that it's quite a
significant failure. I think Optus has basically said that themselves. Ye,
they've owned it and they've apologized ye. So what I'm
interested in is what happens now. I know there is
the Australian Communications and Media Authority. They are responsible for
regulating this space. So now that this failure has happened,
(12:12):
what does AKMA do in response?
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Yeah, so AKMA basically responds by ensuring or investigating telco's
like OPTAs to see if they have carried out their obligations,
that they've met their legal requirements and basically to look
into what they did before and after the outage. So
AKMA can impose significant penalties and in terms of what
(12:37):
OPTAs might be preparing itself for. This isn't the first
time OPTAs has been in trouble under investigation for a
similar issue. It's also not the first time an AUSSI
telco has been in trouble for a similar issue. There
was a Telstra outage in twenty twenty four which was
to do with the triple zero call Center, so a
little bit different. There were breaches identified there and a
(13:00):
three million dollar penalty. But for Optis, you know, there
was this twenty twenty three outage that accrued a total
penalty of more than twelve million dollars from AKMA. So
that outage disrupted services for over ten million customers. It
impacted the ability of some calls to get through to
triple zero. Ten million is huge. It's a bigger scale
(13:23):
than we've seen in the last few weeks for Optis,
But the outcomes of the most recent outages you could argue,
have been much more devastating. So that event in twenty
twenty three led to a government review. There were a
bunch of recommendations aimed at preventing a recurrence, but there's
obviously been a failure.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Has AKMA said what they will do about this failure?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
So AKMA has launched an investigation into Optis regarding the
September eighteen outage. That will involve closely examining not just
the outage in the fallout, but how did Optis communicate
with its customers to the public, governments, etc. How did
it notify or when did it notify Telstra as the
(14:04):
emergency call person.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
About the outage.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
How did it speak with National Emergency Management and AKMA
and the government about what was going on. If Optis
is found to have failed under these obligations to those stakeholders,
it will face serious consequences. As mentioned, there was that
twelve million dollar fine for the twenty twenty three outage.
Given that there already has been a penalty, that there
(14:28):
already has been action, I think AKMA will be taking
that into account. That this is not the first time
that there has been potential breaches Bioptus. There may have
been a failure to enact recommendations by authorities about how
to prevent this from happening again. So I would say
AKMA will be coming down sternly on Optis.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Here.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
The Communications Minister Anika Wells has said that Optis failed
the Australian people. Prime Minister Anthony Albernizi has called the
telco's behavior completely unacceptable.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yesterday I saw some headlines that the opposition leader Susan
Lee is calling for a complete review of how Triple
zero is working in the country.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yeah, all right, So the coalition has said that the
actions of Optus are not good enough. It's referred to
that review over the twenty twenty three emergency outage. There
were recommendations handed down that have been delayed, and essentially
the Communication Minister has said that some of those oversights
will be fast tracked to kind of improve accountability and
(15:32):
end to end oversight of Triple zero. But Susan Lee,
the Opposition leader, said that Optus has now been responsible
for three catastrophic failures and she is calling for, as
you mentioned, Billy, an independent inquiry into the whole Triple
zero ecosystem. In that press conference on Monday, Lee said
governments have a responsibility here. The ecosystem needs an urgent inquiry,
(15:54):
not just by the regulator, not just by tiptoeing around
the government, but to stand up and fight for Australians
who deserve answers. OPTAs is under incredible scrutiny at all
levels of government and across all parties. The South Australian
government has criticized it for how it communicated about the outage,
noting delays between the company finding out about the issue
(16:15):
and actually notifying authorities. The South Australian Premier's office was
only notified of the incident at the same time as
a press conference from the OPTA CEO. So you know,
we can all probably agree that's not a great way
for officials to have to learn about something like.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
This, okay, And so in terms of what happens now,
so we have this AKMA review that they have said
that they are doing, we have OPTAs saying that they
are conducting their own independent review, and then we also
have this potential independent inquiry that Susan Lee, the opposition
leader is pushing for. So a lot of different reviews
(16:51):
potentially going on, and it will be interesting to see
what the result of those are exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Clearly something is missing from the current system, but it
does feel like a lot of attention is being paid
to the system to Optus's actions, and I'm sure we
will know more in the coming weeks and months.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
And thank you so much for explaining it to us,
Thanks Billy, and thank you so much for listening to
this episode of The Daily Oz. We'll be back this
afternoon with your evening headlines, but until then, have a
great day. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a
proud Arunda Bungelung Caalcuttin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily
(17:27):
Oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands
of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects
to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Already and this is this is the Daily This is
the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Tuesday,
the thirtieth of September. I'm Emma Gillespie, I'm Billy fitz Simons.
Over the weekend, Optus confirmed its second triple zero outage
in less than two weeks. The latest incident affected thousands
of New South Wales customers and it follows an outage
linked to four deaths earlier this month. But Optus isn't
(00:36):
the only telco to report emergency call disruptions in recent years.
You might remember a high profile Telstra outage in twenty
twenty four. So what's going on with our triple zero system?
In today's podcast, we are going to unpack these latest
outages and explain how Australia's emergency call service works, who
is responsible for it, and what happens when it fails.
(00:58):
We'll get into all of that in too steep dive
right after a quick message from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
So, m OPTAs has been in the headlines a lot
this month, and I feel like there has been so
much going on that's kind of hard to know where
to start. But I think we should start with what
happened over the weekend, the last thing that has happened.
Do you want to tell us about that? Exactly?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
So the latest outage, the latest Opters outage was linked
to a mobile phone tower in the Woollongong suburb of
Dapto in New South Wales that affected around four and
a half thousand users in the area on Sunday between
three am and twelve twenty pm, so for over nine hours. Now.
OPTAs said it's reviewed nine failed calls to triple zero
(01:43):
during that time, including one instance where a caller required
an ambulance and used another phone to contact emergency services.
But the telco said that all of those who were
impacted are okay to use its own language and that
the issue has been fixed.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
And so, so the reason why this made such big
news is because it's actually the second outage this month.
Do you want to tell us about the first one?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yes? So. On September eighteenth, Optus experienced a technical failure
is what it called it, during a network upgrade. Now,
this failure impacted triple zero calls in large parts of
the country across multiple states, including South Australia, the Northern
Territory and Western Australia. There were also some calls in
New South Wales that were impacted, and that's because they
(02:30):
were closer to the SA border, so those calls relied
on South Australian mobile towers. Optus said that it happened
during a regular upgrade, so it was conducting a routine
upgrade in the early hours of the eighteenth of September,
a Thursday, and it said that its initial testing and
monitoring after that upgrade was rolled out didn't indicate any issues.
(02:53):
So on Optus's side, things all looked fine, but it
became aware of a problem when two customers contacted the
telcoat report that they couldn't contact Triple zero.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And how did Optus respond to that?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So, according to opt to CEO Stephen Rue, once it
was notified, quote, we stopped the upgrade, restoring Triple zero
and notified relevant stakeholders including police and government agencies. Approximately
six hundred calls were identified to have failed during that outage,
which lasted around thirteen hours, and once it had pulled
(03:26):
all the records from the network and had all the
call details of all the failed Triple zero calls, Optus
commenced welfare checks, So that involves reaching out to every
single person that tried to call Triple zero and couldn't.
And during those checks, the CEO, Stephen Rue, confirmed three
people had died after the household was unable to contact
(03:46):
emergency services.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
What do we know about those deaths?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
So the deaths include a sixty eight year old woman
from South Australia, a seventy four year old man in
Western Australia, and an eight week old boy. But we
have since heard from SA Police that while the family
of that baby was impacted by the outage, it's unlikely
to have contributed to.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
The death of the baby.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
So preliminary investigations by SA Police say that the grandmother
of the boy attempted to contact Triple zero using her phone.
When she couldn't get through, she immediately used another mobile
telephone in the house which did successfully connect to Triple zero.
A couple of days after the outage, we heard about
an additional death, a fourth death linked to this outage,
(04:33):
and that was reported in WA a forty nine year
old Perth man. His body was discovered by police during
a welfare check. That welfare check was triggered by his
failed call and do.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
We know what exactly caused this outage?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
So the Optus CEO has blamed the outage on human error,
basically what he has called an employee failure to follow
established protocols for a routine firewall upgrade. And we don't
have you know, a lot more than that. There's some
technical terminology around that failure, but I don't think it
changes the fact that this is a human error that
(05:11):
Optics is attributing the outage to. As for the most
recent outage, that one near Wollongong over the weekend, at
the time of recording, we don't actually know what happened.
OPTAs said it's continuing to investigate the cause of the issue,
but that service has been restored. So we don't know
what happened near Wollongong, but we do know that users
in that area can now contact Triple zero without any issues.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Okay, so we're still learning more about that most recent outage,
but the earlier one has been linked to for desk.
Like you said, what I've been surprised to learn about
this is that what telephone company you're with does actually
impact your ability to call Triple zero. And so I
guess my question is how does Australia's emergency call system
(05:56):
actually work? Like why is it connected to what tele
phone company you're is?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
So in a perfect situation, if everything is going smoothly,
it shouldn't actually matter who your telco is, and I'll
explain why. What's really important to understand is that Telstra
plays a huge role in our Triple zero service. It's
recognized by the federal government as the quote emergency call
person for triple zero, also for one one two. If
(06:23):
you call one one two, that's like the international emergency number,
no matter what country you're in, one one two will
connect you with the relevant emergency services.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Okay, wait pause, two things that I've learned. Yes, so
Telstra is, you said, the emergency contact person.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So that's what the kind of communications legislation, the Regulatory
Framework has designated as its title. But what that means
is that Telstra is responsible for providing the service that
answers calls two triple zero, oh see, and it transfers
them to the requested emergency service organization with relevant details.
(07:01):
So when a person calls triple zero, they will speak
to a Telstra operator who will designate their call to
emergency services. So that's the person that answers the call
and says, you know, do you need police, ambulance, firefighters?
What's going on?
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Are you? Saye?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
What do you need? And then they will pass that
information on to the relevant authority.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Got it? And then the second thing I learned, I've
never heard of one one two before.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yeah, this was something that I didn't know either. So
one one two apparently is the number if you are
overseas and you don't know the number for wherever you are,
it's one one too, not nine to one one.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Interesting, and does that mean that if you can't if
you are in the situation where there is an outage,
maybe you don't know that there's an adage, but for
some reason you're not able to call Triple zero, do
you then call one one two and it should work.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
If it's not working, as in these outages that we
are talking about today, if those systems aren't working, then
it doesn't matter if you call Triple zero or one
one two. So Telstra is the national operator of Triple zero,
regardless of which mobile network you're on. But this is
where it kind of gets a little bit more complicated.
Telstra operates the Triple zero service, but all mobile networks
(08:15):
have obligations to ensure your call can reach Telstra. So
if for whatever reason, you cannot connect to the network
that you're subscribed to, be that Optus Votera Phone TPG,
those telcos have an obligation to ensure that your phone
will attempt to roam and connect via another carrier's network.
(08:35):
This is called camping on. Bear with me because I
know it's a little bit complex, but basically, if your
home network, let's say you're an OPTI customer, If your
home phone she's voted, well, full disclosure, I am with
OPTAs still oh perfect. If your home network isn't working,
your phone should automatically connect to any available network for
(08:57):
emergency calls. So Optis, voter Phone, TPG, Telstra, they all
have a relationship where they work together to ensure that
this camping on procedure can work. And they work together
to make that work because they have to buy law.
So in Australia, those networks are required to take emergency
calls from customers of competing networks through that mechanism.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
But it's a camping on process that failed here, we think,
so okay to just recap where we are. Telstra is
responsible for the triple zero network. And so when anyone
who's with any telephone company calls triple zero, they are
speaking to a Telstra provider, a Telstra person.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yes, but Telstra's not responsible for the whole network. All
providers are responsible for the whole network.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Got it. They're just responsible for who you're speaking to
on the other side of the phone, exactly, got it.
But your provider, so that could be Optis in your case,
Votaphone in my case. They are responsible for making sure
that you can always reach triple zero. And if they're
not able to provide that or facilitate that, then another
(10:07):
network needs to be able to pick up your call. Exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
So those providers are responsible for ensuring customers can reach
triple zero, including through their network or through camping on procedures.
And Telstra are responsible for making sure that your call
will be answered by a person at a desk who
will facilitate passing it on to the relevant emergency services.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Got it. And so I guess the next question is
why did this camping on process, this fall back process
not work here?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
So Optus is still investigating why, But the problem seems
to be that the Optus network couldn't actually detect that
there was any issue, So testing in place after the
upgrade on that bigger outage appeared to show that everything
was working. Everything seemed fine as far as opters could tell.
So the specific part of the network that handles emergency
(10:57):
calls needs to know it's broken in order to activate
the camping on. So there needs to be a red
flag that says, Okay, this person has tried to call
Triple zero and they're not getting through with our cell towers,
so we need to put their call through a votaphone
tower or a Telstra tower over there. Optus, plainly, it seems,
didn't know that that issue was occurring. So last week
(11:19):
it announced an independent review into the technical failure on
the eighteenth of September that's the big one that was
linked to multiple deaths. It said. The review will quote
identify the causes and canvas the applicable processes, protocols, and
operations of the incident, and it will also examine the
operational management of Triple zero calls in the Optus network
(11:39):
and the actions that Optus took in response to the incident,
including whether or not it adhered to its legislative requirements,
So the findings from that are expected to be handed
down by the end of the year.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
I think it's fair to say that it's quite a
significant failure. I think Optus has basically said that themselves. Ye,
they've owned it and they've apologized ye. So what I'm
interested in is what happens now. I know there is
the Australian Communications and Media Authority. They are responsible for
regulating this space. So now that this failure has happened,
(12:12):
what does AKMA do in response?
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Yeah, so AKMA basically responds by ensuring or investigating telco's
like OPTAs to see if they have carried out their obligations,
that they've met their legal requirements and basically to look
into what they did before and after the outage. So
AKMA can impose significant penalties and in terms of what
(12:37):
OPTAs might be preparing itself for. This isn't the first
time OPTAs has been in trouble under investigation for a
similar issue. It's also not the first time an AUSSI
telco has been in trouble for a similar issue. There
was a Telstra outage in twenty twenty four which was
to do with the triple zero call Center, so a
little bit different. There were breaches identified there and a
(13:00):
three million dollar penalty. But for Optis, you know, there
was this twenty twenty three outage that accrued a total
penalty of more than twelve million dollars from AKMA. So
that outage disrupted services for over ten million customers. It
impacted the ability of some calls to get through to
triple zero. Ten million is huge. It's a bigger scale
(13:23):
than we've seen in the last few weeks for Optis,
But the outcomes of the most recent outages you could argue,
have been much more devastating. So that event in twenty
twenty three led to a government review. There were a
bunch of recommendations aimed at preventing a recurrence, but there's
obviously been a failure.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Has AKMA said what they will do about this failure?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
So AKMA has launched an investigation into Optis regarding the
September eighteen outage. That will involve closely examining not just
the outage in the fallout, but how did Optis communicate
with its customers to the public, governments, etc. How did
it notify or when did it notify Telstra as the
(14:04):
emergency call person.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
About the outage.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
How did it speak with National Emergency Management and AKMA
and the government about what was going on. If Optis
is found to have failed under these obligations to those stakeholders,
it will face serious consequences. As mentioned, there was that
twelve million dollar fine for the twenty twenty three outage.
Given that there already has been a penalty, that there
(14:28):
already has been action, I think AKMA will be taking
that into account. That this is not the first time
that there has been potential breaches Bioptus. There may have
been a failure to enact recommendations by authorities about how
to prevent this from happening again. So I would say
AKMA will be coming down sternly on Optis.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Here.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
The Communications Minister Anika Wells has said that Optis failed
the Australian people. Prime Minister Anthony Albernizi has called the
telco's behavior completely unacceptable.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yesterday I saw some headlines that the opposition leader Susan
Lee is calling for a complete review of how Triple
zero is working in the country.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yeah, all right, So the coalition has said that the
actions of Optus are not good enough. It's referred to
that review over the twenty twenty three emergency outage. There
were recommendations handed down that have been delayed, and essentially
the Communication Minister has said that some of those oversights
will be fast tracked to kind of improve accountability and
(15:32):
end to end oversight of Triple zero. But Susan Lee,
the Opposition leader, said that Optus has now been responsible
for three catastrophic failures and she is calling for, as
you mentioned, Billy, an independent inquiry into the whole Triple
zero ecosystem. In that press conference on Monday, Lee said
governments have a responsibility here. The ecosystem needs an urgent inquiry,
(15:54):
not just by the regulator, not just by tiptoeing around
the government, but to stand up and fight for Australians
who deserve answers. OPTAs is under incredible scrutiny at all
levels of government and across all parties. The South Australian
government has criticized it for how it communicated about the outage,
noting delays between the company finding out about the issue
(16:15):
and actually notifying authorities. The South Australian Premier's office was
only notified of the incident at the same time as
a press conference from the OPTA CEO. So you know,
we can all probably agree that's not a great way
for officials to have to learn about something like.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
This, okay, And so in terms of what happens now,
so we have this AKMA review that they have said
that they are doing, we have OPTAs saying that they
are conducting their own independent review, and then we also
have this potential independent inquiry that Susan Lee, the opposition
leader is pushing for. So a lot of different reviews
(16:51):
potentially going on, and it will be interesting to see
what the result of those are exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Clearly something is missing from the current system, but it
does feel like a lot of attention is being paid
to the system to Optus's actions, and I'm sure we
will know more in the coming weeks and months.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
And thank you so much for explaining it to us,
Thanks Billy, and thank you so much for listening to
this episode of The Daily Oz. We'll be back this
afternoon with your evening headlines, but until then, have a
great day. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a
proud Arunda Bungelung Caalcuttin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily
(17:27):
Oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands
of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects
to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
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