Telecoms company Optus, which is wholly owned by Singapore’s Singtel, has been under particularly heavy fire. This follows a disastrous outage that resulted in the terrifying death of four patients. In particular, the incident has focused heightened attention on the company’s communication failures and the company’s compliance with regulatory law.
The outage happened as more than 600 simultaneous calls to emergency services were unable to connect for more than 13 hours. Only by the next day did officials find out this was the case. This was more than 36 hours after his incident started. Australia’s media regulator is already investigating Optus for likely violating anti-siphoning laws. These laws mandate that telecom providers reroute triple-0 calls during outages.
First, Optus sent important emails about the outage response to wrong addresses—individual addresses that just so happened to be in the Department of Communications. The first email was dispatched at 14:45, followed by another seven minutes later stating the issue had been resolved and that only ten calls had been affected. Curiously, the email addresses were altered one week prior to the breach. For telecommunications companies, this change was telegraphed 2 weeks in advance.
“That communication… was sent to the wrong address, which we have told industry a number of times is not to be used as a source for notification,” said Australia’s Deputy Secretary for Communications James Chisholm.
Further compounding the fallout, Optus failed to set up automatic email replies to notify people sending to the email address that it was no longer valid. The ensuing chaos engulfed some of the most critical notifications, which angered lawmakers and the public as well.
Calls for accountability have increased, with some Australian lawmakers calling for Optus to lose its operating license. As a direct result of the incident, current CEO Stephen Rue is under increasing pressure to resign.
In a show of solidarity, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong expressed his condolences over the tragedy and acknowledged the public’s distress.
“I understand fully the anger, frustration and outrage at what has happened,” Wong stated. He further emphasized the expectation that companies like Singtel and its subsidiary Optus must comply with laws and cooperate fully with ongoing investigations.
Unfortunately, this outage has not only triggered operational failures. Beyond that, it raises serious questions about regulatory compliance and the state of corporate responsibility in the telecommunications industry. Other information Temasek Holdings, Singapore’s state-owned investment fund, controls a 51% stake in Singtel. This ownership is indicative of their deep connectedness to the result of what’s happening right now.