Sabra Lane: Optus is under pressure to explain what changes it made to its emergency operating system after the last widespread outage in 2023. The company has updated the record to reveal another seven customers failed to reach emergency services during last week's outage, but authorities and customers are asking how could it happen again? Isabel Moussalli reports.
Isabel Moussalli : Melbourne man Paul Cowling describes his reaction to the Optus outage as visceral.
Paul Cowling: I could need triple zero in the future. I could need it.
Isabel Moussalli : More than 600 emergency calls failed during a 13 hour outage last week and a few deaths are potentially linked to the outage. Paul Cowling didn't need to call for help that day but after 10 years as an Optus customer he cancelled his contract.
Paul Cowling: I can't be sure with Optus that I could ever call triple zero again. Now this is on top of the outage two years ago. Didn't they say they were going to put these procedures and protocols in place?
Isabel Moussalli : The telco's last significant outage in 2023 prompted the so-called Bean Review which came up with 18 recommendations for improvement. Helen Bird is a law and corporate governance specialist at Swinburne University.
Helen Bird: The company itself admitted that it had implemented 12 of the 18 recommendations. The way to make sure that this is actually happening isn't just to settle a list of recommendations, it's to demand a timetable by which they'll be done and require the company to account for those particular actions. None of that occurred.
Isabel Moussalli : At RMIT University, Associate Professor Mark Gregory is calling for more transparency on what steps the telco took after the 2023 incident. He also argues tougher penalties are needed as a deterrence.
Mark Gregory: I believe that Optus needs to make a statement immediately as to which of the Bean Review recommendations they've implemented and which ones they haven't implemented and the timeline for implementation of the recommendations that are still to be completed. The silence is deafening and it's damning.
Isabel Moussalli : Associate Professor Paul Gardner-Stephen from Flinders University specialises in disaster zone telecommunications.
Paul Gardner-Stephen: If they had been followed I think we would probably be in a different situation.
Isabel Moussalli : One of the recommendations is to require carriers to share real-time network information with emergency services organisations. That change doesn't come into force until November. Professor Paul Gardner-Stephen believes that could have changed the shape of what happened but says it's clear that Optus didn't know for hours that there was a problem and that's the problem.
Paul Gardner-Stephen: The more probable situation is that they didn't have adequate facilities in place to monitor for these sorts of outages which I find quite distressing and disappointing and surprising.
Isabel Moussalli : Another recommendation he highlights is to establish a triple zero custodian, that's an oversight body. Communications Minister Anika Wells responding on Monday.
Anika Wells: That role has actually been established and is operative within my department at the moment. It's one of the recommendations of the Bean Review that has been implemented but not yet in full. One of the things that I've been looking at across the weekend is how I can fast track regulatory and legislative relief to make sure that all of these are delivered in full.
Isabel Moussalli : Optus CEO Stephen Rue says the full technical detail of the network failure will be left to an investigation but has assured customers actions will be taken to ensure this doesn't happen in the future.
Sabra Lane: Isabel Moussalli reporting there.