The number of people who failed to call triple zero during Optus’s outage is more than 10 times what the telecommunication company initially disclosed.
Former Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin previously told a parliamentary hearing that only 228 calls by Optus customers failed while the network was down on Nov. 8, 2023.
“We have done welfare checks on all of those 228 calls and, thankfully, everybody is okay,” Ms. Bayer Rosmarin—who shortly resigned after—said at the time.
“I can triple-check the number and get back to you, but I believe it was 228.”
But on Jan. 23 the telco admitted that it had found that an additional 2,469 customers unable to get through, which is over 10 times higher than what Ms. Bayer Rosmarin told the Senate.
Optus Interim CEO Michael Venter said in a statement that the company was “writing to each customer individually to apologise for this and provide the opportunity to discuss their specific circumstances.”
“There is nothing more important to us than the safety and security of our customers, but regrettably on 8 November we did not meet the standards our customers and the community expect from us,” Mr. Venter said.
“I offer my deepest apologies to all those customers who were unable to access Triple Zero services during the outage and did not receive a follow-up check from us.”
“We know we let our customers down and our entire team is committed to addressing all learnings from the outage.'’
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said Optus’s failure to discover nearly 2,500 extra customers failing to connect to emergency services was a “deeply concerning development.”
“Today, Optus advised the government that information it previously provided to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the Senate, and the public about the number of unsuccessful triple-zero calls from mobiles during its nationwide outage on Nov. 8, 2023, was not accurate,” she said on Jan. 23.
“Optus has advised it will commence a process to contact impacted customers and the government has conveyed its expectation this occur expeditiously.”
The new information will be considered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority as part of its independent investigation into Optus’ compliance with rules on emergency calls.
The rules cover obligations such as conducting welfare checks on people making unsuccessful emergency calls during an outage and providing access to emergency call services.
Compensation for impacted customers and ensuring confidence in the triple zero system will also be explored in the federal probe.
An investigation into the November outage listed a number of causes behind the incident, including a partial failure of an interstate transmission device, a fire that caused the cut of an interstate fibre optic cable, and previously unidentified software faults in two sets of Internet Protocol (IP) core network routers.
In November, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young pointed out that Optus initially blamed Singtel’s software upgrade for causing the outage, which stopped millions of Australians, 40,000 businesses, and emergency services from calling or taking card payments on Nov. 8.
Ms. Rosmarin clarified there was no dispute with Singtel.
“We put out a statement that got interpreted [by the media] that the software upgrade was the cause of the outage,” Ms. Rosmarin said.
