Optus launches independent review into technical failures

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Optus is being slapped with a 100 million dollar fine as the Singaporean-owned company simultaneously faces pressure over last week's fatal triple zero outage.

Transcript

00:00There are no words. No words.

00:05But the outrage is building.

00:07What we've seen with Optus and with the failures with triple O is a disgrace.

00:12It's been almost a week since Optus' outage.

00:15The company now says that 480 triple zero calls didn't go through

00:20as the failure dragged on for 13 hours across four states.

00:25How sorry I am about the very sad loss of the lives of four people

00:31who could not reach emergency services in their time of need.

00:37The chief executive went public about the outage on Friday,

00:4124 hours after he learned about it.

00:44I think the whole process from the beginning has been too slow, too late, not enough care.

00:50Stephen Roo has still got the backing of Optus' owner in Singapore

00:53and he's blaming human error during a network upgrade.

00:58This is a process issue.

01:01The triple zero failure is the telco's second in two years.

01:05Last time it was fined $12 million.

01:08This can never happen again.

01:10Optus was fined again today, this time a $100 million penalty

01:15for signing up hundreds of vulnerable Australians to phone plans that they didn't need,

01:20at times setting debt collectors onto their own customers.

01:24This is not what we expect from any Australian company,

01:29let alone a provider of essential services.

01:33The watchdog's former chair says that Optus' licence should be reviewed.

01:38Three huge failures.

01:40Two with the triple zeros, now one huge one on the consumer front.

01:45What is it going to take for these companies to actually look after vulnerable people in our communities?

01:51Just some of the questions that are still unanswered as Optus conducts a review.

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