Australia vows to bolster telecom network resilience after Optus outage
The Australian government has vowed to bolster the resilience of telecommunications networks after an outage at Optus, the country’s second-largest operator. The malfunction affected users in three states and also disrupted some emergency calls, Channel NewsAsia reports.
The outage lasted 76 minutes
The technical malfunction occurred on Friday and lasted 76 minutes. It affected Optus voice services in parts of Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, as well as the Northern Territory. According to the company, some customers experienced intermittent call dropouts.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said that no infrastructure asset, including roads, bridges, poles or wires, can be 100% resilient. According to her, the authorities’ task is to make such systems as reliable as possible.
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Investigation into the incident
Optus, which is owned by Singapore Telecommunications, apologised for the outage on Saturday. The government called the incident deeply concerning and said it was being investigated.
The new outage occurred after last year’s problem on the Optus network, when hundreds of people were unable to contact police, fire services and ambulances. According to the source, that incident led to two deaths. In 2024, regulators fined the company A$12 million for failing to provide emergency connectivity to thousands of people during a nationwide outage in 2023. In 2022, Optus also suffered a cyberattack that affected the data of about 9.5 million Australians.
