Optus sent triple-zero outage email to wrong address
The federal government only learned of Optus’ fatal triple zero outage the day after it occurred because the telecommunications provider sent a notification email to the wrong address.
Optus was required by regulation to notify the Department of Communications about an emergency call outage linked to three deaths on Thursday 18 September.
James Chisholm, deputy minister for communications and media, said the Singapore-owned telecommunications company sent two emails to the ministry that day, one at 2.45pm reporting the outage and the other at 2.52pm saying the issue had been resolved.
However, the emails were sent to an unnecessary address; This means the department was not aware of the outage until the regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), called it in at 3.30pm on Friday, 36 hours after the outage began.
“This communication… was sent to the wrong address and we have repeatedly told the industry that this should not be used as a source of reporting,” Mr Chisholm told a Senate Estimates hearing in Canberra on Wednesday.
“We were not properly notified of the outage and in this case this was not done by the regulator until Friday afternoon.”
The outage was caused by a routine firewall upgrade on the Optus network, preventing more than 600 triple zero calls from connecting in South Australia, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and parts of NSW.
Calls also failed to be routed to another network operating in the area, although this was legally required.
On Tuesday, Communications Minister Anika Wells met with Optus chief executive Stephen Rue and introduced legislation that imposes tough scrutiny on the industry by introducing the triple zero watchdog into law.
While the Senate hearing was continuing, the opposition in the House of Representatives launched pressure for an investigation into the outage, claiming that the investigation carried out by ACMA was insufficient.
Opposition communications spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh said the government had acted “disgracefully” by refusing to launch an independent inquiry into the triple zero network.
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