Singtel Apologises for Deadly Optus Outage After Emergency Call Disruptions

Singapore Telecommunications, owner of Australia’s second largest telco Optus, apologised Wednesday for an outage that likely caused four deaths. The incident disrupted emergency calls in two Australian states, as well as the Northern Territory.

Credit: SINGTEL

Singtel Group Chief Executive Officer Yuen Kuan Moon stated the company is collaborating with the Optus board to investigate last week’s outage and prevent similar incidents. He also noted Optus’s cooperation with government agencies and regulatory bodies.

"We are deeply sorry to learn about the network incident at our Optus subsidiary that has impacted triple-0 calls, and to hear that customers could not connect to emergency services when they most needed them," Mr. Yuen said in a statement.

Credit: SINGTEL

Optus had previously reported a 13-hour outage last week, triggered by an issue with a network firewall upgrade. This disruption potentially affected around 600 customers, some in remote areas, who were unable to make phone calls.

Anger over the outage has been growing in Australia, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese calling the incident "completely unacceptable."

Optus Chief Executive Officer Stephen Rue said Wednesday that initial checks suggested human error could have caused the incident. He admitted that procedures were not followed during the outage.

Mr. Rue announced that Kerry Schott, a non-executive director at AGL Energy, will lead an independent review into the technical failure.

"While our internal investigations are ongoing, this independent review will identify the causes and canvass the applicable processes, protocols, and operations of this instance," Mr. Rue said during a media briefing. "The review will also examine the management of triple-0 calls in the Optus network, including the monitoring and operational effectiveness in relation to the technical failure."

The independent review is expected to be completed by year-end. Its findings will be reported to the Optus board before being made public.

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• Singtel apologised for an Optus outage that likely caused four deaths due to disrupted emergency calls.

• The 13-hour outage was triggered by a network firewall upgrade issue and potentially affected around 600 customers.

• Singtel Group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon and Optus CEO Stephen Rue confirmed investigations are underway.

Source: REUTERS