Offshore ‘failure of process’ in Optus’s deadly outage

Optus chief Stephen Rue concedes call centre staff failed to escalate five red-flag warning calls about the triple-0 outage linked to four deaths.

Optus chief executive Stephen Rue on Sunday. Picture: John Feder

Optus staff at an offshore call centre failed to escalate five red-flag warning calls from customers about a network triple-0 outage, chief executive Stephen Rue has admitted, blaming a “failure of process” for the deadly outcome.

The under-fire telco boss on Sunday announced Thursday’s outage had spread to NSW, with two people in the state not able to call triple-0 during the botched network upgrade that has been linked to four deaths in one of the nation’s worst corporate failures.

Mr Rue would also not confirm which of the 18 federal government recommendations it has implemented following a similar outage in 2023 that could have prevented Thursday’s fatal meltdown, saying Optus would commission its own independent review.

Pressed on whether he had listened to any of the triple-0 calls made by customers, Mr Rue said he had not been able to but a “senior member” of his team had.

He described the tragedy as a “failure of process” and conceded “established processes were not followed”.

“At the time of these calls, there were no red flags for the contact centre to alert them to any live issues. This is clearly not good enough,” said Mr Rue, who joined Optus last November after previously heading the government-owned NBN-Co. “We are implementing a new compulsory escalation process, following any customer reports of triple-0 failures.”

Optus has one call centre in Australia, with the rest overseas, although it is not clear where they are based. It has previously said it used “service centres” in The Philippines and India.

Mr Rue said the warning calls were received by call centre workers offshore but he would not comment on whether those workers may not have appreciated the significance of such red flags.

Chief executive Stephen Rue has commissioned an “independent review” into the Singapore-owned telco to determine what went wrong. Picture: NewsWire/Diego Fedele

“The location of call centres is not a topic for today. What the topic is around is processes,” he said.

The telco is facing intense scrutiny from federal and state governments and industry regulator the Australian Communications and Media Authority, with Communications Minister Anika Wells saying the outage was “completely unacceptable” and would be thoroughly invest­igated.

Police have taken over the welfare checks for the 600 Optus customers who were not able to contact emergency services, with Western Australian police confirming on Saturday that a fourth person – a Perth man aged 49 – had died following the outage.

The other three included another Perth man, aged 74, and a 68-year-old woman from Adelaide. The death of an eight-week-old baby was initially also thought to be linked to the outage, but SA police on Sunday said preliminary investigations had found the outage was “unlikely” to have contributed to the boy’s death.

“The deceased boy’s grandmother has told investigating police that she attempted to call triple-0 using her mobile phone when she was alerted to the fact her grandson was not breathing,” SA police said in a statement. “When her call was not connected, she immediately used another mobile telephone in the house and was successfully connected to triple-0.”

Police said a full investigation would still be conduced and a report handed to the coroner.

On Sunday, WA police said Optus had initially downplayed the impact of the outage.

“The information that the WA Police Force received was that it was a minor outage, that services had been fully restored and that there was 26 calls for the WA Police Force to check,” Commander Jodie Pearson said.

She said it was only on Friday afternoon that police were told of another 123 WA calls that failed to connect. It was through subsequent checks that police discovered the second WA death.

“It’s clear there were protocols that were meant to be put in place by Optus that were not put in place,” Acting Premier Rita Saffioti said.

The Optus shutdown began at 12.30am on Thursday when the company started a firewall upgrade in SA. It only affected triple-0 calls and spread across that state, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Regular calls could still be made, which Mr Rue said meant there were no “red flags” raised on Optus’s network.

Mr Rue has commissioned an “independent review” into the Singapore-owned telco to determine what went wrong. This follows the federal government appointing former ACMA chair Richard Bean to complete an inquiry into the 2023 outage, prompting him to make 18 recommendations.

The government endorsed all his recommendations, which included appointing a triple-0 custodian, comprehensive testing and greater network resilience.

But Mr Rue was not able to say exactly how Optus was progressing with adopting the 18 recommendations, which were made in a report published in March last year.

“I’ve been assured that the company has put in place processes around any recommendations that were made. I’ll be ensuring that the independent review looks at the effectiveness of the implementation,” he said. “In the short term, I have put in place an immediate halt to further changes in our network system until we have a broader understanding of the events that have occurred, so that we can introduce greater monitoring, testing and compliance, and reviews of our change process.

“Further, our technical teams are monitoring triple-0 call volumes and failure rates state by state 24 hours, seven days a week.”

Mr Rue confirmed on Sunday afternoon that two people in NSW were also not able to call triple-0. He said became aware earlier on Sunday that NSW had become caught up in the outage and contacted the NSW government.

“This is because they are based near the South Australian border and their calls were connected to South Australian towers,” Mr Rue said.

“Welfare checks on these callers have been progressed by Optus and the New South Wales police, and we are not aware of any further issues.”

Asked how confident that Queenslanders or other Australians living in border regions near South Australia and the Northern Territory were not also caught up in the outage, Mr Rue said he was “not aware” based on Optus’s call logs.

Mr Rue also said it was irrelevant where Optus’s call centres were located.

“The location of call centres is not really a topic for today. What the topic is around our processes and ensuring that the processes are in place,” he said.

“Early investigations show that it appears that established processes were not followed. We are speaking with the individuals involved.

“As to the full technical detail of the network failure, we will leave that for the investigation.

“What I can assure you is that actions are and will be taken to ensure that this does not happen in future.”

Optus’s communications team shut down a press conference after about 17 minutes on Sunday afternoon, where Mr Rue was questioned about when the telco contacted relevant state authorities, and whether there was a “fundamental problem with the architecture of Optus’s network”.

“This appears to be, and again, we will confirm this independently, but this appears to be a failure in process,” Mr Rue said.

Originally published as Offshore ‘failure of process’ in Optus’s deadly outage