Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles says Australia’s second-largest telecommunications company has to explain why its network failed on Wednesday.
He said Optus needs to explain “exactly what happened here”.
“I mean, we saw customers lose service in some cases for up to 14 hours, that obviously had a really big impact on their businesses, on their ability to stay connected,” he told Nine’s Today show this morning.
Acting Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Marles said the government was very concerned about keeping Australians safe, and the lack of triple zero access for people with landline customers needed to be examined.
“It’s why Optus really does need to explain what has happened here, and it’s obviously why we have undertaken a review, so we can learn the lessons of this, not just for Optus, but in fact for all telecommunications [companies].”
However, he couldn’t say how many contracts the government had with Optus, and when pushed on whether the government would be reviewing them, this is what he said:
What we want to understand is exactly what happened here and make sure that lessons are learnt.
I mean, the critical thing here for all Optus customers is that they get satisfaction around the question of what occurred, and obviously there will be issues around compensation, and as the telecommunications industry ombudsman has said, people should keep their receipts, and no doubt that is what Optus customers will be doing right now.
But we have to learn the lessons, which is why we are undertaking the review we are.”
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said the government needed to work harder on the issue because of how reliant society was on these telecommunications.
“This is not the first breach on their watch, and people have their data held by Optus, they have a reliability question in their minds now about the service being provided by Optus, and I think they’ve got a lot of repair work to do.”