Speaker 1: Already and this is this is the Daily This is
Speaker 1: the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Tuesday,
Speaker 2: the thirtieth of September. I'm Emma Gillespie, I'm Billy fitz Simons.
Speaker 2: Over the weekend, Optus confirmed its second triple zero outage
Speaker 2: in less than two weeks. The latest incident affected thousands
Speaker 2: of New South Wales customers and it follows an outage
Speaker 2: linked to four deaths earlier this month. But Optus isn't
Speaker 2: the only telco to report emergency call disruptions in recent years.
Speaker 2: You might remember a high profile Telstra outage in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. So what's going on with our triple zero system?
Speaker 2: In today's podcast, we are going to unpack these latest
Speaker 2: outages and explain how Australia's emergency call service works, who
Speaker 2: is responsible for it, and what happens when it fails.
Speaker 2: We'll get into all of that in too steep dive
Speaker 2: right after a quick message from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: So, m OPTAs has been in the headlines a lot
Speaker 1: this month, and I feel like there has been so
Speaker 1: much going on that's kind of hard to know where
Speaker 1: to start. But I think we should start with what
Speaker 1: happened over the weekend, the last thing that has happened.
Speaker 1: Do you want to tell us about that? Exactly?
Speaker 2: So the latest outage, the latest Opters outage was linked
Speaker 2: to a mobile phone tower in the Woollongong suburb of
Speaker 2: Dapto in New South Wales that affected around four and
Speaker 2: a half thousand users in the area on Sunday between
Speaker 2: three am and twelve twenty pm, so for over nine hours. Now.
Speaker 2: OPTAs said it's reviewed nine failed calls to triple zero
Speaker 2: during that time, including one instance where a caller required
Speaker 2: an ambulance and used another phone to contact emergency services.
Speaker 2: But the telco said that all of those who were
Speaker 2: impacted are okay to use its own language and that
Speaker 2: the issue has been fixed.
Speaker 1: And so, so the reason why this made such big
Speaker 1: news is because it's actually the second outage this month.
Speaker 1: Do you want to tell us about the first one?
Speaker 2: Yes? So. On September eighteenth, Optus experienced a technical failure
Speaker 2: is what it called it, during a network upgrade. Now,
Speaker 2: this failure impacted triple zero calls in large parts of
Speaker 2: the country across multiple states, including South Australia, the Northern
Speaker 2: Territory and Western Australia. There were also some calls in
Speaker 2: New South Wales that were impacted, and that's because they
Speaker 2: were closer to the SA border, so those calls relied
Speaker 2: on South Australian mobile towers. Optus said that it happened
Speaker 2: during a regular upgrade, so it was conducting a routine
Speaker 2: upgrade in the early hours of the eighteenth of September,
Speaker 2: a Thursday, and it said that its initial testing and
Speaker 2: monitoring after that upgrade was rolled out didn't indicate any issues.
Speaker 2: So on Optus's side, things all looked fine, but it
Speaker 2: became aware of a problem when two customers contacted the
Speaker 2: telcoat report that they couldn't contact Triple zero.
Speaker 1: And how did Optus respond to that?
Speaker 2: So, according to opt to CEO Stephen Rue, once it
Speaker 2: was notified, quote, we stopped the upgrade, restoring Triple zero
Speaker 2: and notified relevant stakeholders including police and government agencies. Approximately
Speaker 2: six hundred calls were identified to have failed during that outage,
Speaker 2: which lasted around thirteen hours, and once it had pulled
Speaker 2: all the records from the network and had all the
Speaker 2: call details of all the failed Triple zero calls, Optus
Speaker 2: commenced welfare checks, So that involves reaching out to every
Speaker 2: single person that tried to call Triple zero and couldn't.
Speaker 2: And during those checks, the CEO, Stephen Rue, confirmed three
Speaker 2: people had died after the household was unable to contact
Speaker 2: emergency services.
Speaker 1: What do we know about those deaths?
Speaker 2: So the deaths include a sixty eight year old woman
Speaker 2: from South Australia, a seventy four year old man in
Speaker 2: Western Australia, and an eight week old boy. But we
Speaker 2: have since heard from SA Police that while the family
Speaker 2: of that baby was impacted by the outage, it's unlikely
Speaker 2: to have contributed to.
Speaker 1: The death of the baby.
Speaker 2: So preliminary investigations by SA Police say that the grandmother
Speaker 2: of the boy attempted to contact Triple zero using her phone.
Speaker 2: When she couldn't get through, she immediately used another mobile
Speaker 2: telephone in the house which did successfully connect to Triple zero.
Speaker 2: A couple of days after the outage, we heard about
Speaker 2: an additional death, a fourth death linked to this outage,
Speaker 2: and that was reported in WA a forty nine year
Speaker 2: old Perth man. His body was discovered by police during
Speaker 2: a welfare check. That welfare check was triggered by his
Speaker 2: failed call and do.
Speaker 1: We know what exactly caused this outage?
Speaker 2: So the Optus CEO has blamed the outage on human error,
Speaker 2: basically what he has called an employee failure to follow
Speaker 2: established protocols for a routine firewall upgrade. And we don't
Speaker 2: have you know, a lot more than that. There's some
Speaker 2: technical terminology around that failure, but I don't think it
Speaker 2: changes the fact that this is a human error that
Speaker 2: Optics is attributing the outage to. As for the most
Speaker 2: recent outage, that one near Wollongong over the weekend, at
Speaker 2: the time of recording, we don't actually know what happened.
Speaker 2: OPTAs said it's continuing to investigate the cause of the issue,
Speaker 2: but that service has been restored. So we don't know
Speaker 2: what happened near Wollongong, but we do know that users
Speaker 2: in that area can now contact Triple zero without any issues.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we're still learning more about that most recent outage,
Speaker 1: but the earlier one has been linked to for desk.
Speaker 1: Like you said, what I've been surprised to learn about
Speaker 1: this is that what telephone company you're with does actually
Speaker 1: impact your ability to call Triple zero. And so I
Speaker 1: guess my question is how does Australia's emergency call system
Speaker 1: actually work? Like why is it connected to what tele
Speaker 1: phone company you're is?
Speaker 2: So in a perfect situation, if everything is going smoothly,
Speaker 2: it shouldn't actually matter who your telco is, and I'll
Speaker 2: explain why. What's really important to understand is that Telstra
Speaker 2: plays a huge role in our Triple zero service. It's
Speaker 2: recognized by the federal government as the quote emergency call
Speaker 2: person for triple zero, also for one one two. If
Speaker 2: you call one one two, that's like the international emergency number,
Speaker 2: no matter what country you're in, one one two will
Speaker 2: connect you with the relevant emergency services.
Speaker 1: Okay, wait pause, two things that I've learned. Yes, so
Speaker 1: Telstra is, you said, the emergency contact person.
Speaker 2: So that's what the kind of communications legislation, the Regulatory
Speaker 2: Framework has designated as its title. But what that means
Speaker 2: is that Telstra is responsible for providing the service that
Speaker 2: answers calls two triple zero, oh see, and it transfers
Speaker 2: them to the requested emergency service organization with relevant details.
Speaker 2: So when a person calls triple zero, they will speak
Speaker 2: to a Telstra operator who will designate their call to
Speaker 2: emergency services. So that's the person that answers the call
Speaker 2: and says, you know, do you need police, ambulance, firefighters?
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 1: Are you? Saye?
Speaker 2: What do you need? And then they will pass that
Speaker 2: information on to the relevant authority.
Speaker 1: Got it? And then the second thing I learned, I've
Speaker 1: never heard of one one two before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was something that I didn't know either. So
Speaker 2: one one two apparently is the number if you are
Speaker 2: overseas and you don't know the number for wherever you are,
Speaker 2: it's one one too, not nine to one one.
Speaker 1: Interesting, and does that mean that if you can't if
Speaker 1: you are in the situation where there is an outage,
Speaker 1: maybe you don't know that there's an adage, but for
Speaker 1: some reason you're not able to call Triple zero, do
Speaker 1: you then call one one two and it should work.
Speaker 2: If it's not working, as in these outages that we
Speaker 2: are talking about today, if those systems aren't working, then
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter if you call Triple zero or one
Speaker 2: one two. So Telstra is the national operator of Triple zero,
Speaker 2: regardless of which mobile network you're on. But this is
Speaker 2: where it kind of gets a little bit more complicated.
Speaker 2: Telstra operates the Triple zero service, but all mobile networks
Speaker 2: have obligations to ensure your call can reach Telstra. So
Speaker 2: if for whatever reason, you cannot connect to the network
Speaker 2: that you're subscribed to, be that Optus Votera Phone TPG,
Speaker 2: those telcos have an obligation to ensure that your phone
Speaker 2: will attempt to roam and connect via another carrier's network.
Speaker 2: This is called camping on. Bear with me because I
Speaker 2: know it's a little bit complex, but basically, if your
Speaker 2: home network, let's say you're an OPTI customer, If your
Speaker 2: home phone she's voted, well, full disclosure, I am with
Speaker 2: OPTAs still oh perfect. If your home network isn't working,
Speaker 2: your phone should automatically connect to any available network for
Speaker 2: emergency calls. So Optis, voter Phone, TPG, Telstra, they all
Speaker 2: have a relationship where they work together to ensure that
Speaker 2: this camping on procedure can work. And they work together
Speaker 2: to make that work because they have to buy law.
Speaker 2: So in Australia, those networks are required to take emergency
Speaker 2: calls from customers of competing networks through that mechanism.
Speaker 1: But it's a camping on process that failed here, we think,
Speaker 1: so okay to just recap where we are. Telstra is
Speaker 1: responsible for the triple zero network. And so when anyone
Speaker 1: who's with any telephone company calls triple zero, they are
Speaker 1: speaking to a Telstra provider, a Telstra person.
Speaker 2: Yes, but Telstra's not responsible for the whole network. All
Speaker 2: providers are responsible for the whole network.
Speaker 1: Got it. They're just responsible for who you're speaking to
Speaker 1: on the other side of the phone, exactly, got it.
Speaker 1: But your provider, so that could be Optis in your case,
Speaker 1: Votaphone in my case. They are responsible for making sure
Speaker 1: that you can always reach triple zero. And if they're
Speaker 1: not able to provide that or facilitate that, then another
Speaker 1: network needs to be able to pick up your call. Exactly.
Speaker 2: So those providers are responsible for ensuring customers can reach
Speaker 2: triple zero, including through their network or through camping on procedures.
Speaker 2: And Telstra are responsible for making sure that your call
Speaker 2: will be answered by a person at a desk who
Speaker 2: will facilitate passing it on to the relevant emergency services.
Speaker 1: Got it. And so I guess the next question is
Speaker 1: why did this camping on process, this fall back process
Speaker 1: not work here?
Speaker 2: So Optus is still investigating why, But the problem seems
Speaker 2: to be that the Optus network couldn't actually detect that
Speaker 2: there was any issue, So testing in place after the
Speaker 2: upgrade on that bigger outage appeared to show that everything
Speaker 2: was working. Everything seemed fine as far as opters could tell.
Speaker 2: So the specific part of the network that handles emergency
Speaker 2: calls needs to know it's broken in order to activate
Speaker 2: the camping on. So there needs to be a red
Speaker 2: flag that says, Okay, this person has tried to call
Speaker 2: Triple zero and they're not getting through with our cell towers,
Speaker 2: so we need to put their call through a votaphone
Speaker 2: tower or a Telstra tower over there. Optus, plainly, it seems,
Speaker 2: didn't know that that issue was occurring. So last week
Speaker 2: it announced an independent review into the technical failure on
Speaker 2: the eighteenth of September that's the big one that was
Speaker 2: linked to multiple deaths. It said. The review will quote
Speaker 2: identify the causes and canvas the applicable processes, protocols, and
Speaker 2: operations of the incident, and it will also examine the
Speaker 2: operational management of Triple zero calls in the Optus network
Speaker 2: and the actions that Optus took in response to the incident,
Speaker 2: including whether or not it adhered to its legislative requirements,
Speaker 2: So the findings from that are expected to be handed
Speaker 2: down by the end of the year.
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say that it's quite a
Speaker 1: significant failure. I think Optus has basically said that themselves. Ye,
Speaker 1: they've owned it and they've apologized ye. So what I'm
Speaker 1: interested in is what happens now. I know there is
Speaker 1: the Australian Communications and Media Authority. They are responsible for
Speaker 1: regulating this space. So now that this failure has happened,
Speaker 1: what does AKMA do in response?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so AKMA basically responds by ensuring or investigating telco's
Speaker 2: like OPTAs to see if they have carried out their obligations,
Speaker 2: that they've met their legal requirements and basically to look
Speaker 2: into what they did before and after the outage. So
Speaker 2: AKMA can impose significant penalties and in terms of what
Speaker 2: OPTAs might be preparing itself for. This isn't the first
Speaker 2: time OPTAs has been in trouble under investigation for a
Speaker 2: similar issue. It's also not the first time an AUSSI
Speaker 2: telco has been in trouble for a similar issue. There
Speaker 2: was a Telstra outage in twenty twenty four which was
Speaker 2: to do with the triple zero call Center, so a
Speaker 2: little bit different. There were breaches identified there and a
Speaker 2: three million dollar penalty. But for Optis, you know, there
Speaker 2: was this twenty twenty three outage that accrued a total
Speaker 2: penalty of more than twelve million dollars from AKMA. So
Speaker 2: that outage disrupted services for over ten million customers. It
Speaker 2: impacted the ability of some calls to get through to
Speaker 2: triple zero. Ten million is huge. It's a bigger scale
Speaker 2: than we've seen in the last few weeks for Optis,
Speaker 2: But the outcomes of the most recent outages you could argue,
Speaker 2: have been much more devastating. So that event in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three led to a government review. There were a
Speaker 2: bunch of recommendations aimed at preventing a recurrence, but there's
Speaker 2: obviously been a failure.
Speaker 1: Has AKMA said what they will do about this failure?
Speaker 2: So AKMA has launched an investigation into Optis regarding the
Speaker 2: September eighteen outage. That will involve closely examining not just
Speaker 2: the outage in the fallout, but how did Optis communicate
Speaker 2: with its customers to the public, governments, etc. How did
Speaker 2: it notify or when did it notify Telstra as the
Speaker 2: emergency call person.
Speaker 1: About the outage.
Speaker 2: How did it speak with National Emergency Management and AKMA
Speaker 2: and the government about what was going on. If Optis
Speaker 2: is found to have failed under these obligations to those stakeholders,
Speaker 2: it will face serious consequences. As mentioned, there was that
Speaker 2: twelve million dollar fine for the twenty twenty three outage.
Speaker 2: Given that there already has been a penalty, that there
Speaker 2: already has been action, I think AKMA will be taking
Speaker 2: that into account. That this is not the first time
Speaker 2: that there has been potential breaches Bioptus. There may have
Speaker 2: been a failure to enact recommendations by authorities about how
Speaker 2: to prevent this from happening again. So I would say
Speaker 2: AKMA will be coming down sternly on Optis.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: The Communications Minister Anika Wells has said that Optis failed
Speaker 2: the Australian people. Prime Minister Anthony Albernizi has called the
Speaker 2: telco's behavior completely unacceptable.
Speaker 1: Yesterday I saw some headlines that the opposition leader Susan
Speaker 1: Lee is calling for a complete review of how Triple
Speaker 1: zero is working in the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So the coalition has said that the
Speaker 2: actions of Optus are not good enough. It's referred to
Speaker 2: that review over the twenty twenty three emergency outage. There
Speaker 2: were recommendations handed down that have been delayed, and essentially
Speaker 2: the Communication Minister has said that some of those oversights
Speaker 2: will be fast tracked to kind of improve accountability and
Speaker 2: end to end oversight of Triple zero. But Susan Lee,
Speaker 2: the Opposition leader, said that Optus has now been responsible
Speaker 2: for three catastrophic failures and she is calling for, as
Speaker 2: you mentioned, Billy, an independent inquiry into the whole Triple
Speaker 2: zero ecosystem. In that press conference on Monday, Lee said
Speaker 2: governments have a responsibility here. The ecosystem needs an urgent inquiry,
Speaker 2: not just by the regulator, not just by tiptoeing around
Speaker 2: the government, but to stand up and fight for Australians
Speaker 2: who deserve answers. OPTAs is under incredible scrutiny at all
Speaker 2: levels of government and across all parties. The South Australian
Speaker 2: government has criticized it for how it communicated about the outage,
Speaker 2: noting delays between the company finding out about the issue
Speaker 2: and actually notifying authorities. The South Australian Premier's office was
Speaker 2: only notified of the incident at the same time as
Speaker 2: a press conference from the OPTA CEO. So you know,
Speaker 2: we can all probably agree that's not a great way
Speaker 2: for officials to have to learn about something like.
Speaker 1: This, okay, And so in terms of what happens now,
Speaker 1: so we have this AKMA review that they have said
Speaker 1: that they are doing, we have OPTAs saying that they
Speaker 1: are conducting their own independent review, and then we also
Speaker 1: have this potential independent inquiry that Susan Lee, the opposition
Speaker 1: leader is pushing for. So a lot of different reviews
Speaker 1: potentially going on, and it will be interesting to see
Speaker 1: what the result of those are exactly.
Speaker 2: Clearly something is missing from the current system, but it
Speaker 2: does feel like a lot of attention is being paid
Speaker 2: to the system to Optus's actions, and I'm sure we
Speaker 2: will know more in the coming weeks and months.
Speaker 1: And thank you so much for explaining it to us,
Speaker 1: Thanks Billy, and thank you so much for listening to
Speaker 1: this episode of The Daily Oz. We'll be back this
Speaker 1: afternoon with your evening headlines, but until then, have a
Speaker 1: great day. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a
Speaker 1: proud Arunda Bungelung Caalcuttin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily
Speaker 1: Oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands
Speaker 1: of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal
Speaker 1: and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects
Speaker 1: to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.