Singtel-owned Optus acknowledged standard procedures weren’t followed during a network upgrade, leading to an outage of its emergency call system that led to the death of four people.

Optus CEO Stephen Rue stated an early investigation shows it appears “established processes were not followed”, prompting it to halt further changes in its network and introduce additional monitoring, testing, compliance and reviews of its change processes.

As to the full technical detail of the network failure, he said it will need to leave that for the investigation.

The incident is the second major outrage to disrupt the Australian operator’s network in less than two years.

Australian Communications Minister Anika Wells wrote in a post Optus has “serious questions to answer” about its processes, why they weren’t followed and what went wrong.

She went on to say the incident is being investigated by the Australian Communications Media Authority, and that there will be consequences for Optus and the broader telecoms sector. “Optus will be held accountable for this failure.”

No red flags
In a statement, the operator explained a network upgrade resulted in a technical failure impacting emergency calls in South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Optus noted its system did not detect any failures when the calls were made, which meant the contact centre received no red flags to alert them to any issues.

“I want to offer a sincere apology to all customers who could not connect to emergency services when they needed them most,” Rue said. “What has happened is completely unacceptable.”

He added it is implementing a new compulsory escalation process following any customer reports of emergency call failures through its customer call centre.

Optus said as it investigates the disruption, it is cooperating with all relevant government agencies and regulatory bodies.

In November 2023, then CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin stepped down about two week after a network outage impacted as many as 10 million customers.