SINGAPORE – Mainboard-listed Singtel said it plans to shore up security and build greater network resilience in its subsidiary Optus, after a 12-hour outage on Wednesday affected nearly half of Australia’s population.
At the telco’s half-year results on Thursday, group chief executive officer Yuen Kuan Moon said: “We take the Optus outage seriously and will continue to invest in the resilience and security of the network.”
He said that the priority in the immediate wake of the outage had been to restore services and take care of customers.
Optus is now investigating and looking for the root cause of the issue.
Mr Yuen said it is too early to estimate what the impact will be.
When asked about potential fines and other penalties that may be imposed on Optus, Singtel group chief financial officer Arthur Lang said the company will disclose any financial impact that may arise from regulatory moves by the Australian authorities.
For much of Wednesday, some 40 per cent of Australia’s population was affected by a network blackout at the country’s second-largest telco.
The outage not only cut Internet and phone connections, but also hit critical services including e-payments, transport and hospitals.
Optus chief executive officer Kelly Bayer Rosmarin told the Australian press on Wednesday that the outage was due to a technical network fault, ruling out any cyber attack.
Australian Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said on Thursday that the government will launch an investigation, and characterised the impact of the outage 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,” she said.
Canberra also hopes the probe will suggest ways to improve the post-outage processes of major telecommunications providers.
According to reports, Australia’s media regulator will conduct a separate review into the outage after emergency calls went down on Optus landlines.
This includes the possibility of letting customers switch to other telcos’ available networks when outages occur.
Some 14 months ago, Optus was hit by one of Australia’s biggest cyber breaches.
The financial impact of the data breach would be up to A$36.2 million (S$31.5 million), stock analysts estimated in October 2022. This included both the regulatory fine and compensation for passport replacement costs of affected customers in Australia who had their personal identification document details compromised.
The Straits Times understands that the fine remains just a possibility for now, and that a class action by affected customers may take several years to reach a conclusion.
Singtel shares meanwhile rose on Thursday after the group posted an 82.6 per cent rise in net profit for the first half of 2023, boosted by an exceptional gain from Indonesian associate Telkomsel.
They closed four cents, or 1.7 per cent, higher at $2.40 on Thursday. The counter fell 4.8 per cent on Wednesday after the Optus outage.
