Singtel summoned by Australia as penalty from fatal outage looms

AUSTRALIAN Communications Minister Anika Wells summoned Singapore Telecommunications to a meeting following a fatal outage at its Optus division, warning the blunder was likely to lead to major financial penalties.

Wells said she’s asked to speak to Singtel when a company delegation is in Australia next week.

“This remains a constant watch for me,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corp on Thursday (Sep 25). “Meeting with Singtel is an important step.”

Wells’ demand ratchets up pressure on Singtel to take action after the Sep 18 emergency call outage led to four deaths. The failure – the result of a botched network upgrade – has turned into a reputational crisis for Optus, which is struggling to contain the fallout from multiple missteps.

It came less than two years after a similar incident at Optus impacted millions of customers across Australia, leading to a fine of A$12 million (S$10.2 million) for the company.

This month’s crisis has raised speculation that Optus and Singtel have failed to invest adequately in the Australian network.

BT in your inbox

Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.

It also suggests Optus has failed to implement recommendations that followed the 2023 incident, Wells said, adding that the firm “can expect more significant fines.”

Optus, Australia’s second-largest phone company, accounts for half of parent Singtel’s revenue.

Singtel said on Wednesday that it’s supported Optus by investing more than A$9.3 billion in the past five years, with a large proportion going toward building network infrastructure across Australia.

SEE ALSO

Wells’ comments came after Australia’s Federal Court imposed a A$100 million penalty on Optus for unconscionable sales practices, including pressuring people with disabilities and limited financial literacy into buying products they didn’t need or could not afford.

Optus’ investigation

Optus has attempted to manage the latest crisis with a steady feed of information, while its own investigation establishes what led to about 480 customers being unable to reach emergency services.

The company is trying to establish why so many callers were left stranded and whether there’s a pattern to the failures, chief executive officer Stephen Rue said on Wednesday.

The firewall upgrade program had been due to be completed over two nights, Rue said. But some normal steps weren’t followed, and calls weren’t diverted to a separate part of the network in the way they should have been, he said.

Optus has named longtime business executive Kerry Schott to lead an independent review into the outage to identify the causes of the failure. Her review will also examine the operational management of Triple Zero calls on Optus’ network, and consider what the phone company did in response to the incident.

The review is expected to be completed before year-end, and Optus’ board will make the report public after considering the findings, the company said. BLOOMBERG