Optus inquiry must examine future of telco’s ownership
At most companies the buck stops with the chief executive, Stephen Rue, who is rightly in the firing line. But Optus isn’t a ‘proper’ company. It’s owned and tightly controlled by its Singaporean owner, Singtel. And after its latest catastrophic failure, Australia’s political class must ask whether this relationship should be allowed to continue.
The key question there is, is Singtel a fit and proper owner of critical Australian infrastructure?
Asking anything less will miss the point entirely and be cold comfort to the families who have lost loved ones thanks to Singtel and Optus’s incompetence.
Three people died after they could not contact triple-0 in September following a botched firewall upgrade – the combination of tragic missteps between engineers working in Chennai, India and Australia.
The federal government does have the power to revoke Singtel’s Australian telecommunications licence. The questions it must ask is whether it has the strength to do so, and how many more people must die as a result of a company that clearly doesn’t have its act together?
Rue, who formerly helmed the taxpayer-funded NBN Co before joining Optus late last year, went through all the motions of someone well-versed in the dance of government accountability.
At the inquiry on Monday morning, he unreservedly apologised, expressed regret at Optus’s handling of the outage, pledged to rebuild public trust. And, crucially, he said he was the man to do it.
Amid the grovelling, he dug his heels in. Asked whether he should fall on his sword – like his predecessor Kelly Bayer Rosmarin did after a nationwide outage in late 2023 – Rue said he wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, he said his departure would be dangerous.
“There are questions arising about my position, but I firmly believe that another change of leader at this time is not what Optus needs, or what our customers need,” Rue told the inquiry.
“The disruption and uncertainty could actually set back the transformation underway and create further risks.”
Calling for Rue’s head is a natural response. He is a face, a warm body, and a convenient scapegoat. But his resignation would achieve nothing.
There are clear systemic issues at Optus. And as a result Australians have faced having their sensitive and personal details plundered by hackers (2022’s cyber attack), losing access to telecommunications for a day – including more the 2000 being locked out of triple-0 (2023’s outage) – and the latest shutdown that has since been linked to three deaths.
If that wasn’t enough, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission successfully sued Optus for $100m in one of the country’s worst cases of unconscionable conduct. It sold mobile phone plans to “vulnerable” Australians it knew couldn’t afford them, including a deaf and mute homeless man, and created scores of fraudulent contracts with First Nations people.
That was before Rue’s time, and his reaction – correctly – was to apologise and say he was working to rebuild public trust. Then, on his watch, three people died after they couldn’t call emergency services.
Rue says Optus is running its own inquiry.
“The initial mistake, a human error, occurred when the wrong process plan was selected for a routine firewall upgrade. The selected plan did not divert traffic before locking equipment inside the exchange that routes triple-zero calls,” Rue told the inquiry.
“This error was not detected because control steps were not followed and alarms were not acted on at the time.
“This is an explanation, not an excuse. We absolutely should be able to quickly identify a triple-0 outage. Call centre staff should be trained to escalate any mention of triple-0, and we should have the capability to assess data and undertake the welfare checks faster.”
At other telcos, technicians manually dial triple-0 to see if the service is still operating during a software upgrade. Optus didn’t follow the most basic of steps that could have ensured its customers could still call an ambulance, police or firefighters – help when they needed it most.
An inquiry isn’t needed to reveal the obvious.
Optus must finally be allowed to act like a proper company. After four high-profile crises in the past three years, it has let down Australians repeatedly, with three families now paying the ultimate price.
It’s time to ask whether Singtel is the right owner of Australian infrastructure, which is as essential as running water.
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