Singtel-owned Optus criticised in review for failures in Australia’s fatal emergency call outage

SYDNEY - Optus’ management has been sharply criticised in an independent review into September’s fatal emergency call outage, which found that a series of avoidable failures and cultural shortcomings at Australia’s second-largest telecommunications services provider contributed to the incident.

The report by veteran executive Kerry Schott found Singtel-owned Optus ignored basic protocols during a network update that triggered the problem, and lacked automated safeguards that should have detected failures in the emergency call system within minutes. Instead, the outage went unnoticed by senior teams for more than 13 hours, despite customers alerting the company’s call centres early in the day.

Optus has been in turmoil since the botched network upgrade prevented some customers from calling emergency services and led to two deaths. The network failure occurred less than two years after a similar incident impacted millions of Optus customers, including some emergency callers, and led to the resignation of Ms Kelly Bayer Rosmarin as chief executive. 

“The real tragedy here was the duration of the Triple Zero call outage and the failure of Optus and its contractors to deal immediately with the warning signals they received,” Dr Schott’s report said. “Optus must learn from its mistakes so that this type of event does not ever happen again.” 

The report also pointed to failings in how Optus handled the unfolding crisis, highlighting delays in notifying emergency services, regulators and government agencies. It made 21 recommendations, from addressing the siloed nature of work at Optus and shifting to a more cooperative way of working, to an industrywide review of the emergency calling system. 

Dr Schott also gave support to CEO Stephen Rue, saying calls to oust him “aren’t helpful at the start of this large programme of change, and will not help develop the more competitive and reliable telecommunications company needed in Australia”.

Optus said it accepted all the recommendations and will move “swiftly” to implement them. 

“While the Schott Review acknowledges the work undertaken before the incident to build a better company, it is clear there is much more to do,” Optus chairman John Arthur said in a statement. “We recognise the scale of the challenge and will act decisively to make the necessary changes to strengthen the business and rebuild trust.” 

Shares of Singtel closed down 0.4 per cent, or two cents, at $4.53 on Dec 18. BLOOMBERG