Australian PM says Optus ‘let down the nation’ as Singtel blames outage on human error

SYDNEY – Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Sept 30 that Singtel-owned Optus had “let down the nation” following a fatal outage of its emergency services calls on Sept 18, as Singtel chief executive Yuen Kuan Moon said the failure appeared to be due to human error.

On Sept 30, Mr Yuen, Optus chief executive Stephen Rue and chairman John Arthur met federal Communications Minister Anika Wells in Sydney to discuss the outage.

After the meeting, Ms Wells told reporters that

the Sept 18

outage

– which led to more than 600 people being unable to reach the police, the fire department and ambulance services and was linked to three deaths – must “never happen again”. She said Optus should employ external advisers to independently assess its network plans.

“We have made clear that Optus is accountable for what happened,” she said.

Mr Albanese told reporters that Optus’ outage was an “unacceptable failure”.

“We’re not satisfied with any of Optus’ behaviour,” he said during a visit to the United Arab Emirates. “Optus has let down its customers and has let down the nation.”

The public and political pressure on Optus has been particularly intense following the Sept 18 outage, which occurred during a network upgrade, and

a further limited outage on Sept 28

.

This is because the firm had already suffered a

national phone and internet outage in November 2023

that affected consumers and businesses, as well as government, public health and safety infrastructure. The federal regulator later found that 2,145 people were unable to make calls to emergency services during that outage.

Mr Yuen told reporters the firm had brought in Mr Rue as chief executive to “really address the issues that we have had since 2022-23”.

“It is very early days. It takes time to transform a company,” he said.

“The initial investigation of the Sept 18 incident is (that it is) due to a people issue, and it takes time to transform, and change people.”

Mr Yuen

said the causes of that

outage were still being investigated

but it appeared to be due to “a step that was missed by someone at Optus”.

“A process issue, a people issue,” he said. “They didn’t follow the proper steps, that resulted in the outage.”

The outages have dominated headlines in Australia and prompted some commentators to question whether Singtel had invested enough in Optus’ infrastructure, particularly after the 2023 outage.

Analysts told The Straits Times that the outages did not appear to be due to underinvestment, but to “cultural problems” that resulted in repeated failures by Optus to adequately detect and respond to network risks and faults.

Associate Professor Rob Nicholls, a telecommunications expert from Sydney University, said he did not believe a major operator such as Optus would underinvest in infrastructure because such a move would inevitably downgrade services and lead to fewer customers and reduced revenue.

But he said it is possible that Singtel needs to give greater control to local Optus management to oversee the network.

“Where there is an overseas carrier responsible and you manage things locally, you need to ensure the devolution of network responsibility goes to the country (where the services are),” he said.

“You want the people on the ground running the network to have responsibility for the network,” he added.

Mr Mark Stewart, a former telecommunications engineer and consultant who is now a lecturer at Adelaide University, told ST that the series of outages at Optus resulted from a “multitude of different failures”.

He said he did not believe the problem was underinvestment but that the firm was not “making sure people are following processes, identifying all likely faults and taking all steps to mitigate those”.

“There seems to be significant evidence of a culture of not paying enough attention to details that are required to get the network to adequate levels of reliability,” he added.

“It seems that Optus’ processes are not robust enough to deal with human error.”

Mr Stewart said the government and regulators need to play a “far greater role” in monitoring telecommunications firms and overseeing their network testing and risk-assessment processes.

“We have ample evidence that this is an area that companies will not usually address out of the goodness of their hearts,” he said.

Mr Arthur, Optus’ chairman, told reporters on Sept 30 that the firm was “committed to working with the government to do whatever needs to be done”.

“We are going to get all of the expertise and help that we need to make sure we make things right here,” he said.

But he added that the outage was not due to underinvestment in the network.

“People make mistakes,” he said. “It was not a question of money – it was not a question of investment.”

Prof Nicholls said it was “premature” to blame the Sept 18 outage on human error, noting that an independent investigation ordered by Optus was still under way.

“The system failed,” he said. “It might be people, it might be the network.”