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Optus: when offshoring goes horribly wrong · The Front

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, novemberfore twenty twenty five. Sixty four percent of
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Australians say they want fewer immigrants to come to this country,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: and the sentiment is spread across all age groups. As
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: support bleeds from the Coalition to Paul Enhnson's One Nation
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and Our Big Cities Sea anti immigration rallies. A new
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: news poll shows widespread anxiety about the volume of Labour's intake.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: That exclusive is live now at the Australian dot Com.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Dou Senior heads will roll at Optus over September's fatal
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: triple O outage, Just not yet. That's the takeout from
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: a Senate inquiry into the three deaths, including a baby,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: that resulted when emergency calls failed after the telco botched
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  Speaker 1: a routine network upgrade. Documents provided by Optus to the
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  Speaker 1: revealed it not only failed to properly inform the government
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  Speaker 1: or the Telecommunications Regulated what was happening, but failed to
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  Speaker 1: properly keep its own CEO in the loop. That's today's story.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: As a CEO, I'm accountable for Optus's failings and I'm
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: deeply sorry.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: This is the boss of Optis, Stephen Rue, and he's
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  Speaker 1: talking to a Senate inquiry into how on earth OPTAs
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  Speaker 1: has failed in its obligation to connect people who call
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  Speaker 1: Triple O two emergency services, particularly on September eighteen, when
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: three people died.
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  Speaker 2: We are all deeply sorry. The tragic events, the tragic
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: deaths of people during this outage will stay with us
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  Speaker 2: as individuals and as a company as we investigate the
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: incident and build on our response while progressing a sweeping
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: transformation of Optus. I joined this company a year ago
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  Speaker 2: because I know it is important for Australia that op
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: TO succeeds. When I arrived, Optus was implementing learnings from
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: the twenty twenty two cyber attack and the twenty twenty
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: three national outage.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, so he's been busy, but Optus has been here before,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: and now rusays the companies identified ten failings that led
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: to this disaster.
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  Speaker 2: The outage on September eighteen was not a complex system failure,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: but it was a unique circumstance where Triple zero was
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: down while other cause continued normally. The initial mistake, a
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: human error, occurred when the wrong process. Plan was selected
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: for a routine firewall upgrade. The selected plan did not
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: divert traffic before locking equipment inside the exchange that routes
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  Speaker 2: triple zero calls. This is an explanation, not an excuse.
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  Speaker 3: Always said it all.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Or Jared Lynch is the Australian's Technology editor.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: He said it not that long ago when the Australian
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  Speaker 3: Competition and Consumer Commission sued Option for one hundred million
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: dollars in one of Australia's biggest unconscionable conduct cases. This
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: is when they know only sold plans to people they
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: knew could not afford them. They sold a plan to
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  Speaker 3: a deaf man, They sold a phone plan to a
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: homeless person, they sold a phone plan to a man
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: with dementia. They've been here before. And Stephen Rue's response,
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: and rightly so, is to acknowledge, apologize and then say
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: he's working to rebuild public trust. But then this outage happened,
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: and he said the same thing. What we need to
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: see now is tangible action. How much money are they
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: investing in capital expenditure to ensure that there isn't another
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: triple zero outage? How much money are they spending in
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: their network to build resilience, to ensure that people do
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  Speaker 3: not die again because they could not get help when
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: they needed at most.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: The last time an CEO fronted parliamentarians in a crisis,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: she was out the door very shortly afterwards. Stephen Rue's
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: predecessor quit in twenty twenty three after grilling at a
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: very similar inquiry when optics and systems failed to prevent
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: a giant hack of customers details and a national outage.
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  Speaker 3: I think calls that Stephen Rue should be sacked. You
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: need to ask what will the end result be, What
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: will it achieve? Will instigate the change that is required
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: to ensure that people can rely on Optus when they
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  Speaker 3: need it most? Probably not? And the reason why is
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  Speaker 3: because there are clear systemic failures within Optus. We saw
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  Speaker 3: it in twenty twenty two with that big cyber attack
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  Speaker 3: which resulted in more than nine million Australians having their
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  Speaker 3: personal and sensitive information plunned it by hackers. We saw
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  Speaker 3: it twelve months later when there was that nationwide outage
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  Speaker 3: and more than two thousand people could not contact Triple zero.
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  Speaker 3: We saw it with the Unconscionable Conduct case, and only
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  Speaker 3: in September, we saw it again. The only difference was
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: three people tragically lost their lives. The question is is
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: Sintel Optice's Singaporean owner a fit and proper owner of
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  Speaker 3: Australian critical infrastructure. That is what the issue is, because
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  Speaker 3: that will go a long way to ensure the systemic
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  Speaker 3: failures with him Optus are addressed. Because the buck has
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: to stop with the owner.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Rusay's Optice has now taken serious steps to make sure
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  Speaker 1: this can never happen again.
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  Speaker 2: Every network change now requires explicit confirmation that emergency call
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  Speaker 2: rating is functioning, both before and after the work is completed.
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  Speaker 2: We've implemented twenty four to seven state by state monitoring
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  Speaker 2: of triple zero call failures, volumes and failure rates too
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  Speaker 2: enable faster detection of anomalies. Our contact center procedures have
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  Speaker 2: been overhauled, including a mandatory escalation process for any customer
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  Speaker 2: reports of triple zero issues, ensuring they're immediately referred to
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  Speaker 2: our network's team for investigation. We've introduced daily manual triple
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  Speaker 2: zero test calls in every state and territory.
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  Speaker 3: I think what we're seeing is what happens when offshoring.
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  Speaker 3: The loss of Australian's sovereignty. What happens when that goes
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  Speaker 3: horribly wrong. It wasn't that long ago that there used
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  Speaker 3: to be boots on the ground in like every phone
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  Speaker 3: exchange in every town. Well now there aren't those boots
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  Speaker 3: on the ground in not only the same town, but
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  Speaker 3: the same state and same country. I mean this was
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  Speaker 3: the result of engineers in Chennai, India who, in Stephen
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  Speaker 3: Rue's words, failed to follow the proper processes. And just
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: to give you an idea, those processes aren't exactly rocket science.
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  Speaker 3: I was speaking to Tolco soon after Office's outage, and
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  Speaker 3: one of those processes is for an engineer with boots
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  Speaker 3: on the ground actually pick up the phone when they
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  Speaker 3: doing a software upgrade and call Triple zero to see
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  Speaker 3: if it's still working. This isn't high tech stuff. It's
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  Speaker 3: about having the capability within country to ensure that when
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  Speaker 3: you do these sorts of software upgrades, and you know
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  Speaker 3: there are thousands that happened each week heacross Australian telcos
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  Speaker 3: that when you do these upgrades, things don't go wrong
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  Speaker 3: and people don't lose their lives as a result.
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  Speaker 1: These inquiries are a search for truth, but they're also
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  Speaker 1: an opportunity for senators to get their high dudgeon on.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Senator Sarah Hanson Young, a member of the Greens, turned
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  Speaker 1: the grilling to OPTUS chair John Arthur after it emerged
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  Speaker 1: ru wasn't informed by his own employees of the magnitude
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  Speaker 1: of the problem.
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  Speaker 4: Mister Arthur.
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  Speaker 5: But mister Arthur, you've heard all of this, and this
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  Speaker 5: says to me, your management team is not up to
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  Speaker 5: the job. And there was members of the team who
• 8:04
  Speaker 5: knew that it was a whole lot worse, that they'd
• 8:06
  Speaker 5: given misleading information, wrong information to the government. They knew
• 8:12
  Speaker 5: that completing the welfare checks that two people had died,
• 8:17
  Speaker 5: and their CEO was totally out of the loop.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Like, how can you.
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  Speaker 5: Sit here as the chairperson of OPTAs and say that
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  Speaker 5: this executive team are doing their job.
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  Speaker 4: Senator, As the chief executive pointed out, there were I
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: think ten failures here, ten failures And if you're asking
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  Speaker 4: me whether I am alarmed at that, I can assure
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  Speaker 4: you I am. However, this man was brought into this
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  Speaker 4: company to make sure we became a company that didn't
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  Speaker 4: have ten failures like that. That's his job. Now he's
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: partway through this job, and I'm expecting him to finish
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  Speaker 4: it because I never in my life want to be
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: in the position I'm in today where I have to
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  Speaker 4: answer these sorts of questions about a company I'm associated.
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  Speaker 5: With, or is there anyone else on the executive team
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  Speaker 5: who's going to get the sack, because from what I
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  Speaker 5: can see, there's been failure from the corporate communications element
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  Speaker 5: right through to the CEO.
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  Speaker 4: Senator, if you're asking me whether or not there will
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  Speaker 4: be accountabilities here, and accountabilities not just for junior people,
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  Speaker 4: then I can assure you that there will be.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Coming up. Why the watchdog says it's not to blame.
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  Speaker 1: A couple of times during his evidence, Stephen Rue said
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  Speaker 1: the success of the system was on everyone.
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  Speaker 2: Telcos must make sure their own networks are reliable. That's
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: on each of us. But we must also ensure the
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  Speaker 2: backup systems like camp On, which is a credit. The
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: mobile network function that allows a mobile phone to connect
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  Speaker 2: to the Triple zero emergency call service using another carrier's
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  Speaker 2: network when the user's own network is unavailable also works
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  Speaker 2: for Australians. That's on all of us as an industry,
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  Speaker 2: including telco's, the device manufacturers, the industry, the regulator and government.
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  Speaker 1: But the regulators not copying the blame. Narita or Lauchlan,
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  Speaker 1: chair and Agency head of the Australian Communications in Media Authority,
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  Speaker 1: was grilled by Sarah Hanson Young.
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  Speaker 5: Octors clearly don't think they have to inform you of
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  Speaker 5: serious outages or the numbers of the numbers don't matter,
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  Speaker 5: and they obviously didn't think that they have an illegal
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  Speaker 5: obligation to inform you of whether there's a deadly result.
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  Speaker 5: And doesn't that say something about how they view you
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  Speaker 5: as a regulator And they clearly don't take you.
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: Seriously, Senator, that's a question you have to put d
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  Speaker 4: opts not to me.
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  Speaker 5: They're arguing that regulatory requirements they had fulfilled. But because
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  Speaker 5: you didn't pick up the phone and you didn't chase
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  Speaker 5: them up, they've been let off the hook, Senator.
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  Speaker 3: They won't be let off the hook. They're the police,
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  Speaker 3: they're the regulator. They should have been watching them very
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  Speaker 3: very closely to ensure that the changes that they said
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: that they were adopting across their network to ensure such
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  Speaker 3: an outage did not happen. Again, those changes were actually happening.
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  Speaker 3: It's not like it was unprecedented. It wasn't that long
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  Speaker 3: ago that we had an outage of similar proportions. The regulator,
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: the police should have been doing their job, monitoring optors closely.
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  Speaker 3: For them to say well, it's not our fault. Opt
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  Speaker 3: has failed, not us, that just doesn't wash.
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  Speaker 1: Joe Lynch is The Australian's Technology editor. You can check
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: out all our reporting and analysis from Jared reported, Quailing
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Canbra and the team right now at the Australian dot
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  Speaker 1: Com dot a hu