The Singaporean giant can fly in a troubleshooter from its global business, but that would undo all the effort it has made over the past 12 months in making sure that Optus has Australian oversight and doesn’t simply dance to the whims of an overseas overlord.
So, Rue is staying put until the inquiries are complete, hoping that there are no further outages that jeopardise Triple Zero calls.
The Triple Zero system is a complex beast, with many points of failure.Credit: The Age
Interestingly, Yuen on Tuesday also bypassed concerns around Singtel not putting enough money into Optus’ network, saying the problem was the people and processes inside Optus – in plain speak, Optus staff messed up, and the rest is history.
As for Wells’ comments on ensuring Triple Zero dropouts no longer plague Australians, that’s a problem bigger than just Optus. On Monday, just as Optus was left red-faced by an outage in the Illawarra, a couple of other minor outages (Telstra and NBN) also put Triple Zero calls at risk.
Every major telco in the past couple of years has had a Triple Zero outage at one time or another.
Before its latest disaster, Optus had a major issue in 2023, while Telstra had an incident last year when its Triple Zero call centre was slow to transfer calls to emergency services for 90 minutes. And, earlier this year, TPG/Vodafone was reprimanded for failing to notify Telstra – which is responsible for running the Triple Zero emergency call service – about an outage that had affected emergency calls from its network.
The fact that outages, even minor ones, can quickly escalate to a full-blown company crisis means that every telco, not just Optus, is now on notice.
So, managing Triple Zero is an industry-wide concern, and the system – originally built for the days when a single operator (Telstra) ran landlines across Australia – is a complex beast, with many points of failure.
The complexity comes not only from the multiple networks operating in Australia today, but also the multitude of devices Australians use daily. Then there are emergency service operators across each state, who are a vital cog in making sure every call is answered promptly.
Telstra operates the Triple Zero service and its job is to route emergency calls from all telcos to the appropriate emergency service. There are strict rules in place that spell out what needs to happen when there is an outage, and despite the carnage of the past few weeks, these rules do work well most of the time.
The independent accountability that the federal government is seeking from Optus now should pinpoint where the telco dropped the ball, but the episode has put the entire telecommunications industry on its toes. Optus chair John Arthur announced on Tuesday that consultancy giant Kearney would oversee the Optus network for the forseeable future, and report directly to the Optus CEO and board.
The fact that outages, even minor ones, can quickly escalate to a full-blown company crisis means that every telco, not just Optus, is now on notice.
And you can bet that Optus’ peers are all furiously making sure their communications channels to state and federal governments and the regulator are crystal clear.
With the federal government now copping heat for not expediting the installation of a Triple Zero guardian legislation, some of that pressure will trickle down to the telcos. They will also have to accelerate the process of implementing the recommendations laid out in the Bean Review – which was carried out after the major Triple Zero outage in 2023 to ensure it never happened again.
Going slow on Triple Zero is no longer an option – not for the telcos, and not for the federal government.
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