Optus to face watchdog probe over ‘shocking failure’, says Jim Chalmers
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More news: Treasurer Jim Chalmers says the government has ordered the communications watchdog to investigate Optus’ “shocking” triple-zero failure.
The Coalition has demanded an urgent inquiry into the “entire triple zero ecosystem” after the telco giant apologised for a fresh outage – this time in New South Wales.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Chalmers revealed that the Australian Media and Communications Authority (ACMA) has been ordered to investigate the outages, saying the government would “consider throughout this process whether further actions are necessary”.
Chalmers urged Australians not to lose faith in the system, saying the government was moving swiftly to “get to the bottom” of Optus’ failure.
Demanding an independent inquiry into the “catastrophic failures”, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley accused Communications Minister Anika Wells of going “missing in action”, after she attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week.
Chalmers said Wells was in the US to advance Australia’s “world leading” social media regulations, and was taking the Optus matter seriously.
“It's possible to do both of those things at once, and that's what Annika has been doing. It's not surprising that the opposition leader will be playing politics with something like this,” he said.
What they said: “This is an absolutely shocking failure from Optus. The most appropriate course of action for the government to take to get to the bottom of this is to ask ACMA to conduct a very thorough investigation, and that's what we've done,” Chalmers said.
Optus apologises for latest outage before minister meeting in Sydney
The news: Optus has apologised for a fresh outage ahead of a meeting with federal Communications Minister Annika Wells. Then company said the fault at a mobile tower in Dapto, south of Sydney, on Sunday left about 4500 people unable to make calls between 3am and 12.20pm.
The company identified nine failed triple zero calls, including one caller that required an ambulance and used another phone to contact emergency services, and another who could not get through to emergency assistance.
NSW Police conducted welfare checks and confirmed all callers were safe, according to Optus.
"We sincerely apologise to any customers who were impacted," the company said in a statement.
The context: The outage came a day before Communications Minister Annika Wells was due to meet in Sydney with Singtel chief executive Yuen Kuan Moon, Optus chief executive Stephen Rue and Optus chair John Arthur.
The Monday meeting was called in response to an earlier Optus network failure, which disrupted hundreds of Triple Zero calls across South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and parts of rural NSW and has been linked to three deaths.
The sources: Optus statement, ABC News , The Sydney Morning Herald , Jim Chalmers press conference
