‘Australians need to have confidence in our telco services’: Optus disaster leads to sector overhaul

Sweeping changes will be made to Australia’s telecommunications industry, following a review of Optus’ “inadequate” response to a nationwide outage that saw lives put at risk and businesses taken offline for an entire trading day, as well led to the resignation of CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said all 18 recommendations made to the government by an independent review into the sector would be agreed to, including “new rules mandating how, what and when telecommunications carriers communicate with their customers during and after a major outage”.

There will also be a triple-zero “custodian” appointed to monitor the service and hold the telcos to frequent stress testing, after close to three thousand Australians were unable to access emergency services during the recent Optus outage. Telcos will be required to share all real-time network information with emergency services in the case of any outages.