The federal government has promised Optus will “suffer significant consequences” after multiple deaths were recorded during the telco’s triple zero outage, with major financial penalties likely.
The communications regulator said it wasn’t informed of the outage by Optus until hours after it had been resolved – and that the company had provided “inaccurate” information.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said Optus’s behaviour was “completely unacceptable” and “action” would be taken.
The communications minister, Anika Wells, condemned the company for having “failed the Australian people”.
“They can expect to suffer significant consequences as a result,” Wells said on Monday.
The Optus chief executive, Stephen Rue, admitted on Friday that a network upgrade – which prevented people from making triple zero calls the previous day – affected up to 600 households in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
Sign up: AU Breaking News email
It was revealed on Sunday that the outage also affected parts of New South Wales. Welfare checks on affected callers later found two people in South Australia and one in Perth had died during the failure.
An eight-week-old boy from SA was also among the deaths authorities initially linked to the fault – but police now believed the outage was “unlikely to have contributed to the death”.
Wells criticised Optus for the network failure and the company’s handling of the crisis. During a press conference with Nerida O’Loughlin, the chair of the Australian Communications Media Authority (Acma), Wells pledged a comprehensive investigation and response.
“We will be considered about our response, but there will be consequences for [Optus] and the broader telecommunications sector. Optus will be held accountable for this failure. They and all providers have no excuses here,” she said.
“They must now work with government and Acma to make their systems better.”
Wells did not elaborate on what consequences could follow, but O’Loughlin said Acma’s powers extended to financial rather than criminal penalties.
O’Loughlin said Acma’s investigation would investigate whether Optus had properly informed customers of the incident. There were federal requirements that providers had facilities to ensure emergency calls were connected, she said.
Optus was fined $12m for similar failures in 2023.
“We didn’t expect to be here again so soon, less than two years after that breach,” O’Loughlin said on Monday.
Minister for communications Anika Wells. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Wells said Optus emailed her department on Thursday afternoon to advise that 10 calls were affected, but subsequently “didn’t hear anything until 3.40pm on Friday afternoon”.
Then, the government was told 100 triple zero calls had been affected, with notification soon after that the issue had grown to 600 calls involving several deaths.
O’Loughlin said Acma wasn’t notified “at all until the outage was resolved” – despite the requirement that stakeholders and regulators be advised immediately.
Wells suggested Optus had not properly implemented its obligations after the previous triple zero outage. The minister said she had expressed her “unbelievable disappointment” to Rue.
“Despite the fact that there has been an independent investigation into the outages of triple zero calls and what needs to be done, on the face of it, there has been ineffective implementation of the recommendations by Optus,” Wells said.
Speaking in New York City, Albanese said the government would let investigations run their course, but he would be “surprised” if Rue wasn’t considering his position as CEO.
“Optus’s behaviour is completely unacceptable – we have made that very clear. There’ll be a proper investigation by the authorities and the government has action at its disposal,” the prime minister said.
“What we want is to ensure that something like this shouldn’t happen. Optus has obligations as to other communications companies and quite clearly … they haven’t fulfilled the obligations that they have.”
Rue addressed reporters on Sunday and said the company had put in place compulsory escalation processes for when triple zero outages were reported.
Optus was unaware of the outage for emergency calls until being notified by a customer at about 1.30pm on Thursday, Rue said.
The update was cancelled and access to triple zero was restored after 13 hours.