Adelaide, Australia — In the wake of a significant outage that led to multiple fatalities, Optus has stated that it would face a considerable challenge in providing real-time updates on emergency call disruptions to both emergency services and the government. The outage, which occurred five months prior, had tragic consequences, claiming the lives of four individuals.
Last Thursday, a planned network firewall upgrade at 12:30 a.m. inadvertently blocked emergency calls for Optus customers across South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and parts of New South Wales. Over a span of 13 hours, more than 600 emergency calls could not connect. Despite warnings from customers and emergency services, Optus did not become aware of the situation until 1:30 p.m. that same day.
The outage, which resulted in the deaths of two South Australians and one individual from Western Australia, has heightened scrutiny of Optus’s emergency protocols. A fourth death, that of an infant in South Australia, was reportedly unrelated to the outage.
Communications Minister Anika Wells revealed that her office and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) were not informed about the outage until 3 p.m., approximately 90 minutes after Optus had identified the issue. It wasn’t until 3:40 p.m. on Friday that a complete understanding of the outage’s breadth was achieved. The public was finally notified around 5:30 p.m. that day.
This communication breakdown has raised alarms, particularly as Optus had previously resisted government mandates requiring immediate information sharing during emergency outages. In response to an earlier Optus failure, the federal government had amended telecommunications standards to mandate real-time notification of outages impacting emergency calls by telecommunications providers.
In a submission to the government this past April, Optus maintained that they lacked the technical capacity for real-time communication regarding outages among the relevant parties. The company has expressed concern that developing such capabilities would require significant resources and coordination.
Optus representatives clarified that although they do not oppose the concept of real-time notifications, the establishment of a continuous information feed would necessitate extensive investment and collaboration among several organizations. The telco has been sending opt-in notifications regarding unplanned outages to participating emergency service organizations since June 30.
Nerida O’Loughlin, chair of ACMA, stated that the agency’s ongoing investigation will assess whether Optus has adequately invested in its network infrastructure to manage failures, given the delays in notifying affected parties. A newly established “triple-zero custodian,” intended to oversee the emergency call system, has yet to be staffed more than a year after the previous outage, adding another layer of complexity to the situation.
Government sources have indicated that they aim to introduce legislation to empower the custodian, which could include imposing new penalties on telecommunications companies that fail to provide sufficient outage information. While an exact timeline for the legislation remains unclear, there are plans for a parliamentary bill by year’s end, albeit with limited sitting weeks left in the current session.
