Optus cops outage fine
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Optus has been fined over $12 million for Triple Zero service failures.
Subsidiaries of Singtel Optus Pty Limited (Optus) have faced penalties after failing to maintain emergency call access during a major network outage last year, following an investigation by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).
The outage, which occurred on 8 November 2023, disrupted communication across Australia, affecting businesses and individuals alike.
It also left 2,145 Australians without access to emergency services, with 369 welfare checks missed too.
Optus’s failures during the outage have been identified as breaches of the Telecommunications (Emergency Call Service) Determination 2019.
The ACMA reported that the outage resulted from Optus’s core network routers self-isolating in response to an unexpected traffic surge.
This issue was linked to a routine software upgrade by an international partner, which rerouted traffic through Optus’s network, causing an overload.
The ACMA found that Optus’s network was insufficiently resilient and had no safeguards in place to handle such rerouting, concluding that the company “failed in the management of its network in a number of areas”.
ACMA Chair Nerida O’Loughlin said that the penalty size reflected the incident’s severity, particularly for emergency services access.
“Triple Zero availability is the most fundamental service telcos must provide to the public,” she said.
The federal government, through a review commissioned post-incident, has endorsed a series of regulatory measures to strengthen the sector’s response to future outages.
These include mandates for improved telco communication with customers, stringent oversight of emergency service networks, and enhanced testing and backup systems to ensure that calls to emergency numbers like Triple Zero can be rerouted through alternate carriers if primary networks fail.
In response, the ACMA says it has updated several provisions within the Telecommunications (Emergency Call Service) Determination 2019.
It is also progressing towards implementing a new industry standard that mandates minimum communication requirements during network disruptions.
These changes will “require further actions and investment by telcos, including Optus, to provide better safeguards for consumers”, Ms O'Loughlin said.
Optus says it has implemented immediate system modifications designed to improve network resilience.
These include strengthening international router connections and enhancing the internal management network.
The ACMA noted that Optus had the knowledge and resources to enact such improvements well before the incident, deeming the outage “preventable”.
