The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) administered the penalty after Optus’ November 2023 network outage which caused significant disruption across the country, with more than 2,145 citizens unable to contact emergency services.
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ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said the size of the penalty reflected the critical nature of the breaches.
“Triple Zero availability is the most fundamental service telcos must provide to the public. When an emergency call fails to connect there can be devastating consequences for public health and safety,” O’Loughlin said. “Our findings indicate that Optus failed in the management of its network in a number of areas and that the outage should have been preventable.”
An issue with a routine software upgrade resulted in Optus’s mobile network going down for 14 hours on November 8 2023, with the operator then failing to conduct 369 welfare checks on users who had tried to contact emergency services during the outage.
Following a government-commissioned post-incident review, the ACMA introduced provisions to ensure telcos were able to continue providing access to emergency services during an outage.
Operators in Australia are now required to conduct regular systems testing and are required to provide a minimum level of customer communication during outages under new ACMA rules.
“Beyond the penalties announced today by the ACMA, the Optus outage has directly led to changes for industry regulatory obligations in relation to emergency call services,” O’Loughlin said.
“This will require further actions and investment by telcos, including Optus, to provide better safeguards for consumers and enhance the Triple Zero ecosystem so that Australians can have even greater confidence they will be able to get through to emergency services when they need it.”
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