Optus outage prompts calls to force telcos to switch customers onto other networks when one fails

The major Optus outage has prompted calls for the federal government to compel telecommunications companies to allow customers to use other networks when one fails.

More than 10 million Optus customers were unable to make calls or use the internet for at least seven hours on Wednesday, hampering businesses, affecting hospitals, disrupting Melbourne’s train system, and cutting off an entire community in regional WA.

Many more customers were unable to log in to work from home, attend telehealth services, or contact sick relatives.

Given how reliant we are on these services, telecommunications analyst Paul Budde said it was in the national interest to find a solution.

“If Optus goes down, why can’t we switch to the Telstra network and vice versa?” Mr Budde said on ABC Radio Sydney.

It’s called roaming and is widely used in other countries including New Zealand.

Similar to international roaming, but without the hefty charges, it allows mobiles to pick up service from another provider when their own does not cover the area.

Australia’s competition regulator recently found roaming during natural disasters was “technically feasible”, although complex.

Given it is technically possible, Mr Budde said it was in the national interest to expand roaming capability to cover outages.

“Telecommunications underpins our economy and society. Today’s outage is easily going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. We could even have people lose their lives because the phone doesn’t work,” he said.

“In the past couple of years, we had three or four fails so it’s just a matter of time before this happens again.”

Canada and Japan are moving to implement roaming during outages after separate severe incidents in 2022 prevented millions of customers from making emergency calls.

Telstra, Optus, TPG reject non-emergency roaming

Australia is only working on introducing roaming in emergency situations such as floods or bushfires.

Australia’s three mobile network providers — Telstra, Optus and TPG Telecom — do not support roaming in the event of a major outage or cyber attack, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

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The ACCC report noted that Telstra, which had its own outage in May, told them “general network quality and resilience are competitive differentiators” and that normal competitive investment incentives should not be undermined by any temporary mobile roaming arrangements.

A TPG spokesperson said they were working with Telstra and Optus to test disaster roaming.

“While temporary disaster roaming has an important role to play in emergency situations, the reality is no networks have been built to handle all mobile traffic from all consumers all at once in dense metropolitan areas,” they said.

in a statement last week Telstra said: “We will continue to engage with other network providers and government on emergency roaming, including how it will operate and be funded, as well as the timing for rollout.”

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland was asked on ABC Radio Sydney whether customers should be automatically transferred to another network when their own carrier went down.

“There certainly are issues here and they go beyond competition,” Ms Rowland said.

Ms Rowland said the federal government was focused on working on switching customers to other networks if one went down in emergency situations such as bushfires and floods.

“We have just announced in the past couple of days that we’re going to be working with the carriers to get emergency roaming working,” she said.

The government has given them until March to report back.

Telecommunications expert at RMIT University Mark Gregory said the major companies needed to do more to prevent customers from being cut off.

“I feel like it’s deja vu every time this happens,” Dr Gregory said.

“The telcos need to be forced to have redundancy in their system and they need to distribute their systems.”

While he has long argued we should have the ability to do domestic roaming at all times to improve connectivity in regional areas, he warned roaming may not solve a problem like Wednesday’s outage because Optus may not have been able to provide the necessary authentication.

Businesses and individuals encouraged to have a plan B

Even if mobile networks agreed or were forced to work towards domestic roaming, it would likely take several years to work out what was needed to make it happen, such as increasing the capacity of networks to handle the additional load.

Small Business Australia executive director Bill Lang supported investigating the option of roaming, but said businesses could not afford to wait that long for a solution.

Mr Lang urged businesses to do what they could to protect themselves from future outages, such as having a SIM card with a different provider, a modem that could connect to the NBN, and alternative payment methods.

“Business owners need to take their own steps as soon as possible to ensure that they’re able to communicate and transact commerce with their customers to get their cash flow.”

Mr Budde also urged businesses and individuals reliant on their phones to have a plan B, such as an eSIM.

An embedded SIM, or eSIM, allows customers to sign up to different mobile service providers without having to physically go to a store. Most newer phones are compatible with eSIMs.