Telcos could be forced to allow customers to roam rival networks in the event of outages under emergency contingencies being developed by the federal government, despite Optus previously expressing opposition to the plan.
Millions of Optus customers were left without access to phone or internet services from 4am AEST to as late as 6pm on Wednesday, along with a number of broader services including trains, payment systems and call centres.
Customers had no option but find alternatives such as wifi or buying a service from a rival telco, but plans under way could mean they would be able to connect to Telstra or Vodafone should another outage occur.
In October, the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, and the emergency management minister, Murray Watt, tasked the communications department and the National Emergency Management Agency (Nema) to begin working with the telcos on developing a means for temporary emergency roaming. An Australian Competition and Consumer (ACCC) report last month found it was technically feasible for the companies to implement.
The proposal was planned specifically for emergencies or natural disasters, but when asked whether it could work for an outage, Rowland said it was an option.
“This will require cooperation between mobile network carriers, but comes following the ACCC finding the capability was technically feasible,” she said.
“We’re continuing to monitor this space to ensure we have the right settings to support Australians stay connected during disasters.”
The move is similar to one undertaken in Canada after Rogers Communication last year suffered a lengthy outage nearly identical to the one Optus is believed to have suffered from on Wednesday. The service brought down services for 12 million customers and subsidiary brands, and also took down payments, healthcare and law enforcement services for 15 hours.
After the Canadian government gave the telcos 60 days to come up with a plan, the companies signed an agreement to allow for emergency roaming for such outages.
The ACCC asked Telstra to analyse the Canadian proposal and a similar US initiative, and Telstra said the same methods could be adopted in Australia.
However, the ACCC said there was reluctance from the telcos, including Telstra and Optus, about the use of emergency roaming.
“The Australian mobile network operators agree that a temporary mobile roaming solution in Australia should not be used to cover non-emergency-related network outages with its use limited to events that are considered ‘life or death’ and not for example in response to a network outage or cyber-attack,” the ACCC said.
Optus, in its submission to the review, also argued in part that the 000 function that allows people to call emergency services on any mobile network already exists. However, the company yesterday advised customers not to call 000 from their mobile phones because some customers had reported it would not connect.
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The company said it would have to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to increase network capacity if it was required to implement the roaming plan.
“The potential roaming traffic would be significantly above existing levels … There would need to be significant investment in additional network capacity in order to ensure congestion did not adversely impact service quality.”
Guardian Australia asked Optus if it held the same view on Thursday. A spokesperson said the company would attend an industry roundtable on disaster readiness and resilience on 23 November.
Nema will report back to government by March next year. The federal government has separately launched a review focused on the Optus outage.
The company’s embattled CEO, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, told Seven News on Wednesday the company “understands how important being constantly connected is”.
The company had not yet explained the cause of the outage beyond Bayer Rosmarin stating it was a “technical network default”.
“These outages do happen when you’re running critical infrastructure and we do everything we can to make sure that they don’t. Today we weren’t successful in that endeavour,” Bayer Rosmarin said.