Coles caught in Optus crisis as 13 customers blocked from triple-0
The human toll of Optus’s catastrophic outage continues to climb as Coles confirms 13 customers couldn’t call for help when they needed it most.
Coles has become entangled in Optus’s fatal outage, revealing 13 of its mobile customers were unable to reach crucial emergency services during last month’s triple-0 meltdown.
The supermarket giant, which operates its own mobile brand via an agency agreement with Optus, confirmed this alarming detail on Wednesday.
A spokesman said in response to questions from this masthead about the welfare of its customers that Coles has been in continuous contact with Optus since the initial shutdown.
“Optus has confirmed that there were 13 Coles Mobile customers impacted, all of whom have received welfare checks from Optus or local state police,” the spokesman said.
Optus locked customers out of triple-0 again on Sunday after a failure at a mobile tower in Wollongong, prompting a stern rebuke from Anthony Albanese and external oversight of the nation’s second biggest telco.
The Prime Minister slammed Optus again on Wednesday, saying its shutdowns — the first of which has been linked to three deaths — “should never have occurred”.
Optus confirmed late on Tuesday the Wollongong failure was unrelated to last month’s deadly outage, which stemmed from a botched firewall upgrade.
It blamed its “technical partner”, Swedish telecommunications titan Ericsson, saying its equipment “did not appear to operate as it should”. It has also partially blamed Nokia contractors in Chennai, India for the firewall failure.
An Ericsson spokeswoman said on Wednesday the Wollongong outage was an anomaly.
“Ericsson can confirm that we are currently working with Optus to investigate an issue that occurred at a single mobile tower in Dapto, NSW on September 28,” the spokeswoman said.
“Based on our current monitoring, we have ascertained that this issue was limited to this particular cell site and that what has occurred on this cell site is an anomaly.
“We are taking this issue seriously and it has the full attention of our Australian and global teams. Ensuring the resilience and performance of our mobile network solutions for our customers remains our highest priority.”
During the Wollongong outage calls to triple-0 were not automatically diverted to rival carriers — a process known as camp-on — for the third time, following outages in 2023 and last month.
“Although the tower appeared active on the network, calls attaching to it were impacted and did not transfer to other networks,” Optus said.
“Initial assessments indicate that 5G services were operational at all times but 4G services were not, which prevented calls from connecting. Optus’ 5G does not currently carry voice services in Australia.
“Optus’ ability to detect the outage was impacted as the Ericsson equipment in the cell tower did not alarm that 4G services were not operational.”
Yuen Kuan Moon, the chief executive of Optus’s Singaporean owner Singtel, flew to Sydney this week for a “routine” board meeting at the telco.
The 2023 outage — which came 12 months after a cyber attack exposed the sensitive details of about 10 million customers — cost former Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin her job, Mr Yuen reiterated his support for her replacement Stephen Rue.
Mr Rue joined Optus last November after previously helming the taxpayer-backed NBN Co.
“We brought in Stephen 11 months ago to transform Optus to really address the issues that we have had since 2022-23. It is very early days. It takes time to transform a company,” Mr Yuen said.
“The initial investigation of the September 18 incident is due to a people issue, and it takes time to transform, and change people.”
Optus has appointed global consulting firm Kearney to begin “immediate oversight” over its operations, which Communications Minister Anika Wells demanded.
“During the performance of their work Kearney will be regularly reporting directly to the Optus CEO and board,” Optus chairman John Arthur said.
“The Optus board, which includes Singtel Group chief executive officer Yuen Kuan Moon, is confident that Optus CEO Stephen Rue and the management team, supported by the best external expertise, will undertake the critical reforms to continue to transform the business, and strengthen the Optus mobile network, restoring the confidence and trust of the Australian public.
“The board’s highest priority is ensuring that Australians can rely on triple-0 when it matters most, and we would once again like to apologise to all those impacted by the September 18 outage.”
Originally published as Coles caught in Optus crisis as 13 customers blocked from triple-0
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