Singtel-owned Optus outage review flags urgent protocol gaps

Singtel-owned Optus, Australia's second-largest telecom services provider, said on Thursday (Dec 18) that an independent review into its September outage found gaps in process, accountability, escalation and information protocols that need urgent attention.

The independent review also "highlighted challenges in Optus' culture that have impacted decision-making and response times", the firm added in its statement.

A technical failure at Optus on Sep 18 resulted in a disruption to emergency call services, which was linked to two deaths, according to the report.

The report added that during the almost 14-hour-long outage, only 150 out of 605 callers were able to connect to the Triple Zero emergency line - a 75 per cent failure rate.

"Tragically, two fatalities have been related to this large number of unconnected emergency calls," said the report.

At the time, the telecom carrier said that a departure from standard processes during a network upgrade sparked the technical failure that prevented customers from making emergency calls.

Dr Kerry Schott, an executive and board director with extensive experience in various sectors, including telecommunications, led the independent review.

She currently serves as a non-executive director of AGL Energy and chairperson of both the Carbon Market Institute and the Competition Review Panel for the Australian Government.

At its meeting on Tuesday, Optus' board accepted all the recommendations and "agreed to move swiftly with their implementation", the firm said in its statement on Thursday.

"The Board is taking further action in relation to individual accountabilities flowing from the incident, which will extend from financial penalties through to termination in appropriate cases," Chairman John Arthur said.

The independent review makes 21 recommendations, Optus said, building on its multi-year transformation and changes already introduced after shortcomings were identified in its initial incident response.

The September incident occurred after emergency call services were disrupted due to a technical failure during a network upgrade, Optus' CEO Stephen Rue had said.

A deviation from standard procedures during a network firewall upgrade triggered the 13-hour outage in Australia, Optus said after the incident. 

The Australian government said it would investigate the "unacceptable" failure, and the company said it would cooperate with any effort to look into the incident.

This comes less than a year after Optus was fined A$12 million (US$7.7 million) by regulators for failing to provide emergency call services to thousands during a nationwide outage in 2023.

Optus also suffered a cyberattack in 2022 that affected the data of up to 10 million Australians.

Former CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigned in the wake of the earlier incidents, and Rue took over in November 2024.

Singtel launched a successful takeover bid for Optus in 2001, making the latter a wholly owned subsidiary of the Singapore telco.

In a statement to CNA on Thursday, Singtel group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon said the company welcomes Dr Schott's review of the Optus outage and that Optus' board and management have "fully accepted" her recommendations.

"With the Board’s oversight, we expect CEO Stephen Rue and his team to move swiftly with the implementation of the recommendations which will accelerate the transformation programme already underway."

He added that Singtel is "deeply sorry" for the September outage and will continue supporting Optus "as it works to rebuild its network resilience and reliability as a critical infrastructure provider".