The Optus Post-Incident Review has made its final report to the Federal Government, which examined emergency call arrangements, customer communications and complaints handling during and after the nationwide Optus outage in 2023.
The review was led by the former deputy chair for the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), Mr Richard Bean.
The report makes recommendations aimed at ensuring that the telco industry learns from the outage.
While no network is immune from outages, the review identifies opportunities for industry, regulators and government to better mitigate impacts and respond to such events, particularly with respect to the triple zero service.
The Federal Government said that it welcomes Mr Bean’s work, and thanks industry for its engagement.
The review was granted a short extension in February 2024, after additional information was received from Optus. This information related to Optus’ network wilting arrangements, which is an industry practice where signals from mobile towers are powered down during disruptions in order for triple zero to be carried by another network.
While the technical cause of the outage was not within scope of the review, it found that the disruption to some triple zero calls was predominantly caused by a failure of Optus 3G towers to wilt.
The government has said that it will consider the recommendations of the review, and that the final report and the government’s response will be publicly released in due course.
Federal Minister for Communications, Michelle Rowland, said that 2023’s Optus outage was incredibly disruptive for millions of Australians, and had serious impacts on public safety, access to essential services, and the ability for businesses to trade.
“The government thanks Mr Richard Bean for the comprehensive Post-Incident Review and its final report. We want industry and government to learn the lessons from this event, and take steps to prevent this type of disruption occurring again.”
