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Can – and should – Optus survive its new 000 catastrophe? · The Front

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm christinamiot.
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  Speaker 1: It's Monday, September twenty two, twenty twenty five. Australia's recognition
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  Speaker 1: of Palestine has been formalized as part of a coordinated
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  Speaker 1: foreign policy effort with Canada and the UK. The move
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  Speaker 1: has been lashed by Donald Trump's Republican allies, who say
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  Speaker 1: Prime Ministers Anthony Albanesi, Mark Karney and Keir Starmer are
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  Speaker 1: rewarding terrorism. Young people are deserting the coalition and men
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  Speaker 1: are turning away from opposition leader Susan Lee in record numbers.
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  Speaker 1: That's according to new data from Newspoll. You can read
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  Speaker 1: our experts analysis of those new numbers right now at
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  Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot AU. Two New South Wales
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  Speaker 1: residents couldn't connect to emergency services during a deadly network
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  Speaker 1: outage on Thursday. It's the late from a growing catastrophe
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  Speaker 1: at Optis which left people in two states dead after
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  Speaker 1: their calls to triple zero failed. Today Technology editor Jared
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  Speaker 1: Lynch joins us to break down this entirely preventable tragedy.
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  Speaker 2: I'd like to reiterate how sorry I am that the
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  Speaker 2: very sad loss the lives of four people who could
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  Speaker 2: not reach emergency services in their time of need.
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  Speaker 1: This is Optus Chief executive Stephen Rue.
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  Speaker 2: And the news has understandably created concern for the wider community,
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  Speaker 2: who rightly wants to know that when they need this
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  Speaker 2: service it will be available to them.
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  Speaker 1: On Sunday afternoon, Roue fronted the media to explain how
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  Speaker 1: as many as four people may have died as a
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  Speaker 1: result of a bungled network upgrade that meant they were
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  Speaker 1: unable to connect it to emergency services.
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  Speaker 2: What I can assure you is that actions are and
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  Speaker 2: will be taken to ensure that this does not happen
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  Speaker 2: in future.
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  Speaker 3: It's just tragic. Clearly there is systemic failures within Optus
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: for such a devastating and fatal outage to have happened.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Jared Lynch is the Australian's Technology.
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  Speaker 3: Editor now Stephen Rue. He was appoint at last November
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  Speaker 3: as chief executive after previously helming government owned MBN Co.
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  Speaker 3: Now part of his job is to write the ship.
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  Speaker 3: He has to go through what went wrong? Has he
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  Speaker 3: got the right executives in the right positions to ensure
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  Speaker 3: such an outage does not happen again. And if you
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  Speaker 3: can't clear the dead wood and write the nation's second
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  Speaker 3: biggest telco, then he's really got to ask himself is
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: he really the right person for the job. Because you
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  Speaker 3: can't gamble with triple zero. This is clearly life and death.
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  Speaker 1: When the husband of a sixty eight year old South
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  Speaker 1: Australian woman dialed triple zero on Thursday, he would have
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  Speaker 1: been met not by the reassuring voice of an emergency dispatcher,
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  Speaker 1: but rather something like.
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  Speaker 2: This, We advise that the number you have called it's
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: currently switched off or unavailable. Please CALLN again later.
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  Speaker 1: The woman was experiencing chest pains and needed urgent medical help,
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  Speaker 1: but it never came and she died alone in their
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  Speaker 1: home in the coastal suburb of Queenstown. Across the border
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  Speaker 1: in Western Australia, police conducting welfare checks confirmed two people
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  Speaker 1: may have died as a result of the outage, a
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  Speaker 1: fourteen nine nine year old Kensington men and a seventy
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  Speaker 1: four year old Perth man. Both deaths will be investigated
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  Speaker 1: by the state coroner. On Sunday, it was revealed calls
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  Speaker 1: by two New South Wales residents located close to the
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  Speaker 1: South Australian border also failed to connect. It was thought
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  Speaker 1: an eight week old baby boy had died in South
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  Speaker 1: Australia because his grandmother was unable to connect to emergency
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  Speaker 1: services after he suddenly stopped breathing. But South Australian police
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  Speaker 1: sit on Sunday, while the Gaula West family was impacted
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  Speaker 1: by the outage, it was unlikely the little boy's death
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  Speaker 1: was connected to the delay in dispatching an ambulance. So
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  Speaker 1: how did this happen?
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  Speaker 3: At about twelve thirty am on Thursday, began what is
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  Speaker 3: known as a firewall upgrade. This is a routine upgrade
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  Speaker 3: and why do they do it. It's to ensure that
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  Speaker 3: there's a security in their network and to prevent cyber hackers,
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  Speaker 3: as you know back in twenty twenty two that were
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  Speaker 3: filed by cyber attacks. It's something they take very seriously.
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  Speaker 3: The problem for these sort of upgrades is they're notoriously tricky.
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  Speaker 3: Things often always go wrong, but when they do go wrong,
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  Speaker 3: alarm bells are normally raised and then they can quickly
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  Speaker 3: revert to what was happening previously. What made this upgrade
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  Speaker 3: tricky was there was a failure, as Stephen Rho said,
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  Speaker 3: in Optus's processes, which didn't raise those alarm bells, and
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  Speaker 3: it was made complicated by the fact that normal calls
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  Speaker 3: could continue to be made, so on their network they
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  Speaker 3: were saying basically nothing was going wrong. People would still
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  Speaker 3: make calls on their phone, if they were calling their
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  Speaker 3: uncle Fred, Arnie Barbera, or friend Fay down the road,
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  Speaker 3: whoever it may be. Those calls were still able to
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  Speaker 3: be made. The calls that were not able to be
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  Speaker 3: made and which were affected during the upgrade were Triple zero,
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  Speaker 3: and that had fatal consequences. At about nine o'clock in
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  Speaker 3: the morning, we know that some customers started calling to say,
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  Speaker 3: we can't call Triple zero, what's going on. We now
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  Speaker 3: know that five people called that overseas contact center saying
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  Speaker 3: we cannot call Triple zero. We need help. But those
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  Speaker 3: calls were completely ignored, and it wasn't until thirteen hours later,
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  Speaker 3: at about one point thirty that, as Stephen Rue said,
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  Speaker 3: it wasn't until then that we recognized the severity off
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  Speaker 3: the issue, and by then it was too late. People
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  Speaker 3: had died because they could not contact emergency services when
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  Speaker 3: they needed help.
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  Speaker 1: It's protocol in incidents like this for telcos to alert
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  Speaker 1: the authorities when they haven't been able to conduct their
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  Speaker 1: own welfare checks of people who dialed triple zero during
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  Speaker 1: an outage, but Western Australian Deputy Premier Rita Safiotti said
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  Speaker 1: police weren't called until late on Thursday evening, around nine
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  Speaker 1: pm to check on twenty six people.
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  Speaker 3: That still doesn't excuse the fact that people weren't able
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  Speaker 3: to contact emergency services in the first place, particularly when
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  Speaker 3: there is a process known as camp on because things
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  Speaker 3: do things do go wrong in Telcoyland. It very rarely
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  Speaker 3: runs smoothly, so when there's an outage in one network
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  Speaker 3: and someone tries to call triple zero, they're diverted to
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  Speaker 3: another carrier so they can get help when they need.
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  Speaker 3: That didn't happen in this case. It was a massive failure.
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  Speaker 3: So it's no surprise that police have now taken over
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  Speaker 3: those welfare checks and that underscores the severity of this issue.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, you think this couldn't get even more serious.
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  Speaker 3: Who's to say that there were others who sadly had
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  Speaker 3: to pay fatal consequences. So those welfare checks are ongoing.
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  Speaker 3: The police have taken over and hopefully the tragedy isn't
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  Speaker 3: made even more worse.
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  Speaker 1: On Sunday, Stephen Rue said a new compulsory escalation process
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  Speaker 1: would be implemented at Optis.
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  Speaker 2: We have not detected the triple zero failures in our network.
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  Speaker 2: At the time of these calls. There were no red
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  Speaker 2: plagues for the contact center to alert them to any
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  Speaker 2: live issues. This is not clearly good enough, and we
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  Speaker 2: are implementing a new compulsory escalation process following any customer
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  Speaker 2: reports of triple zero failures through our customer call center.
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  Speaker 1: So Jared stephen Rue said on Sunday that Optics will
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  Speaker 1: conduct its own investigation and cooperate with government agencies and
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  Speaker 1: regulatory bodies on these investigations. What do you expect those
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: various investigations will look like.
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  Speaker 3: Well, I don't have a lot of faith in these investigations.
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  Speaker 3: The government commissioned Richard Bean, who's the former deputy chair
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  Speaker 3: of AKMA during the last outage, and there were eighteen
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  Speaker 3: recommendations that were made to prevent another triple zero outage
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  Speaker 3: from occurring. Now, during the press conference, Stephen Rube said
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  Speaker 3: that there will be another review. Well, how many more
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  Speaker 3: reviews do we need? I mean, Richard being delivered a
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  Speaker 3: very comprehensive review about what went wrong and made very
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  Speaker 3: detailed recommendations, including a pointing a triple zero custodian employing
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  Speaker 3: greater network resilience, greater monitoring to ensure it doesn't happen again.
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  Speaker 3: It was very detailed. Do we really need another review
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  Speaker 3: to find out what's went wrong? I mean to me,
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  Speaker 3: that sounds like it's kicking the can down the road.
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  Speaker 3: Accountability must happen now, four people died. What more needs
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  Speaker 3: to be said?
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  Speaker 1: Coming up? It's a case of history repeating for OPTAs.
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  Speaker 1: We've been here before in late twenty twenty three.
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  Speaker 3: OPTAs is tonight in damage control after a day long.
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  Speaker 1: Network outage cause mass disruption right across the country. During
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  Speaker 1: that outage, the biggest in the telcos history, Mobile, internet
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  Speaker 1: and landline services went down, public transport networks froze, hospitals
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  Speaker 1: were in disarray, and triple zero calls were disrupted. Last year,
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  Speaker 1: Optus was fined twelve million dollars for the catastrophic incident,
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  Speaker 1: and former chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin failed it would
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  Speaker 1: never happen again.
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  Speaker 4: We operate a very reliable, very good service for our
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  Speaker 4: customers and we pride ourselves on going the extra mile
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  Speaker 4: for our customers, so this is a very unusual occurrence.
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  Speaker 4: We're deeply sorry that it occurred and we will do
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  Speaker 4: everything we can to make sure it doesn't happen again.
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  Speaker 2: Too unusual.
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  Speaker 1: An investigation by the Australian Communications and Media Authority found
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  Speaker 1: the twenty twenty three outage was preventable and made eighteen
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  Speaker 1: recommendations for how another incident like it could be avoided.
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  Speaker 1: According to Emergency Management Minister Kirsty McBain, twelve of those
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  Speaker 1: recommendations have been implemented to date. The Australians reporter Joanna
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  Speaker 1: Panagopolis grilled Stephen Rue about the recommendations on Sunday. Can
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  Speaker 1: you just talk us through which of those are now
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  Speaker 1: in place office and what they are exactly and if
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  Speaker 1: if there's someone implemented, what goes one are?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I have been I've been assured that the
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  Speaker 2: company put in place processes around around any recommendations that
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  Speaker 2: were made. But I will be ensuring that the investment
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  Speaker 2: that the independent review looks at the effectiveness of the
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  Speaker 2: implementation of those. But if they were put in place,
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  Speaker 2: how can we now trust that that's it's going to
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  Speaker 2: make any difference.
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  Speaker 4: Another seven recommendations, another investigation.
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  Speaker 2: Because you will, because we will, we will to an
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  Speaker 2: independent review, we will make public the facts, and I
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  Speaker 2: can assure you we will be implementing it.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Here's Jared Lynch.
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  Speaker 3: The question that really needs to be asked is that
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  Speaker 3: twelve million dollar penalty. Is that sufficient or is it
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  Speaker 3: merely a rounding error for companies like this? And what
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  Speaker 3: is needed to bring accountability to prevent this from happening again,
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  Speaker 3: because that is what a fine is for. It's an
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  Speaker 3: incentive to ensure that you don't do a repeat offense.
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  Speaker 3: But that has happened, like the reviews, what more needs
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  Speaker 3: to be done? What greater penalty is needed to hold
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  Speaker 3: our essential infrastructure which is what telcos are to account
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  Speaker 3: to ensure that when Australians need help in a life
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  Speaker 3: and death situation that they can get it.
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  Speaker 1: Do you have any faith anything will change it? Opt
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  Speaker 1: just given this is the second similar major incident in
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  Speaker 1: two years, and not forgetting the telco was the target,
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  Speaker 1: as you said earlier, of a major data hack in
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. Do you think anything's likely to change
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  Speaker 1: after this?
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  Speaker 3: The place is clearly a mess. In twenty twenty two,
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  Speaker 3: we had a cyber attack which leaked the extensitive details
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  Speaker 3: and personal information of about ten million Australians. Twelve months
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  Speaker 3: later we had that national meltdown where people could not
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  Speaker 3: contact Triple zero. Then we had the a Triple C
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  Speaker 3: seem for one hundred million that resulted in one hundred
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: million dollar penalty for selling mobile plans to people they
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  Speaker 3: knew they could not afford them. Clearly there are systemic failures.
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  Speaker 3: Stephen Ruth has got to be very forensic to find
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  Speaker 3: out if he's got the right team in place, as
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  Speaker 3: I said earlier, because if he doesn't, then he's clearly
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  Speaker 3: not the man for that job. And it is only
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  Speaker 3: by doing that action, clearing the deadwood, getting on top
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  Speaker 3: of the systemic failures, and proving to the Australian people
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  Speaker 3: that action has been taken, tangible action, not feel good
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  Speaker 3: recommendations in a review or commission in another independent report.
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  Speaker 3: The time for that as well pass. The Australian public
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  Speaker 3: needs to see demonstrable action that Optus has changed its
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  Speaker 3: ways to have faith in our second biggest telco.
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  Speaker 1: Jared Lynch is The Australian's Technology editor, This story is
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  Speaker 1: developing quickly.
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  Speaker 2: For all the
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Latest, join our subscribers at the Australian dot com dot
• 14:34
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