Under-fire telco Optus has announced an independent inquiry into how technical failures left people unable to access triple-zero services.
Kerry Schott will lead the external review into last week’s catastrophic outage linked to up to four deaths, as a potential axing looms for chief executive Stephen Rue.
The announcement comes on the same day Optus will head to the Federal Court to ask it to tick off a $100 million fine for unconscionable sales conduct, after it was pulled up by the consumer watchdog.
Under the action taken by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Optus admitted it had engaged in “unacceptable” dodgy sales tactics, including pressuring customers to buy mobile goods they did not want or need, which affected Indigenous and disabled customers.
Dr Schott’s review will press for the causes of the outage and examine the operational management of triple-zero calls on the Optus network.
It will also look at Optus’ response to the incident and whether it adhered to policies and legal requirements.
In a statement, board chairman John Arthur appeared to stand by the embattled chief executive.
“The Optus board is working with CEO Stephen Rue and his team to ensure we develop a full understanding of what went wrong and why, and what we need to do to prevent any repetition,” he said.
“In the interests of transparency – and to promote greater community understanding of what went wrong and why – we are committed to sharing the facts of the incident.”
But Optus faced a barrage of criticism following Thursday’s incident because it had not implemented a third of the recommendations from a similar incident in 2023.
Former chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigned 12 days after that outage and an earlier hacking incident that left millions of customers exposed to potential online fraud.
Mr Rue, a former NBN Co chief, was appointed in mid-2024.
The review will be completed before the end of the year.
Dr Schott was at NSW Parliament on Tuesday as the state government responded to another of her reports.
She oversaw a review of the state’s train network and how wiring issues brought it to a crippling halt in May.
This comes as another telco has revealed it has changed its emergency call handling and technology after Optus’ 2023 outage.
Resilience improvements included real-time network monitoring to detect call-routing anomalies and a welfare check protocol that escalates to police if triple-zero calls fail three times in five minutes, TPG Telecom told AAP.
But it did not agree with the assertion that the self-regulatory nature of the Australian telco industry had led to repeated failures in emergency call management.
“Australia’s mobile network operators already comply with more than 500 pieces of laws, regulations and codes … we don’t need more regulation; we need smarter regulation,” a spokesman said.
Telecommunications expert Mark Gregory has said that the problems exposed in the Optus outages extend throughout the sector.
“Unless the government is prepared to introduce new legislation and regulations, then this culture of the wild west and having cowboys in charge is not going to change,” he told AAP on Monday.
Telstra has been contacted for comment.
Australian Associated Press is the beating heart of Australian news. AAP is Australia’s only independent national newswire and has been delivering accurate, reliable and fast news content to the media industry, government and corporate sector for 85 years. We keep Australia informed.
