Australia to investigate massive Optus Internet and phone outage

SYDNEY – Australia said on Thursday it would launch an investigation into

a 12-hour national outage at telco Optus that cut off Internet and phone connections to nearly half of its population,

hitting critical services including payments, transport and hospitals.

More than 10 million Australians, or 40 per cent of the population, were hit by the network blackout at the nation’s No. 2 telco firm for much of Wednesday, triggering fury and frustration among customers and raising concerns about the country’s telecommunications infrastructure.

Optus apologised again on Thursday and blamed the outage on a “network event” that triggered a “cascading failure”.

It did not elaborate. Optus has previously ruled out a cyber attack.

Customers will be given free data “to acknowledge their patience and loyalty”, chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said in a statement.

The federal government would undertake a post-incident review into the outage, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said, describing its impacts as “particularly concerning”.

“While we welcome that Optus services were restored over the course of the day, it is critical the government conducts a process to identify lessons to be learnt from yesterday’s outage,” Ms Rowland said in a statement.

Australia’s media regulator will conduct a separate review into the outage after emergency triple zero (“000”) calls went down on Optus landlines, Ms Rowland added.

Taxi driver Ian Martin-Brown told Nine Network that he might take legal action after losing a day’s work. Others, including cafe owners and niche online retailers, told media outlets they would seek compensation for lost revenue.

“There’s no doubt that it has to be on the table,” Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones told ABC Radio.

“If you’re a small business that has lost a day’s takings because your phone system was not working, then you’re going to be asking those hard questions.”

Parent company Singtel said the outage had “let down our customers” and apologised as it reported on Thursday an 83 per cent jump in half-yearly profit.

But UBS analysts said Optus now faces the possibility of losing customers to Telstra, the nation’s largest telco firm, and TPG Telecom due to “strong brand perceptions” of the network quality of rivals.

The government would also check the possibility of allowing customers to switch to available networks when outages occur.

“The industry is prepared to be involved… it is feasible, and we’re going to take this forward as a government,” Ms Rowland told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.