Overview
- Stephen Rue told senators the failure stemmed from human error during a routine firewall upgrade that locked a session border gateway, with Nokia contractors using an outdated procedure and wrongly rating the change as zero risk.
- Optus reported 605 customers were unable to reach triple zero for more than 12 to 14 hours across South Australia, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and parts of New South Wales.
- Rue learned of fatalities around 8am on September 19 but ACMA and the communications minister were not informed until mid‑afternoon after a series of internal meetings, with Optus notifying its board and parent Singtel earlier.
- The company announced 300 new onshore call‑centre roles focused on triple zero and vulnerable customers, accelerated on‑shoring of network operations, a 150‑person Process Centre of Excellence, daily test calls and new upgrade checks, plus an independent review led by Kerry Schott.
- The Senate inquiry continues alongside ACMA and internal investigations, new real‑time outage reporting rules are now in force, and Rue received backing from the chair as senators indicated they may call Singtel to give evidence.