‘Failure to provide credible, honest and forthright information’: Senate Committee report slams Optus following mass outage
A Senate Committee has found that Optus failed to provide “credible, honest and forthright” communication during last year’s unprecedented national outage, and should be forced to provide fair compensation should another outage occur.
The outage – which occurred November 8, 2023 and lasted about 12 hours – left an estimated 10.2 million customers and 400,000 businesses without mobile or internet service, and prevented almost 3,000 calls to Triple Zero. Also affected were subscribers to other operators that rely on the Optus network, including Dodo, Amaysim, and Moose.
Optus faced widespread backlash on the day for poor communication, and the Senate Committee – led by Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young – found that during the outage, two aspects of the telco’s communications were “particularly striking” – the timeliness and comprehensiveness of its public communications and its deficiencies in communicating with Government and essential service organisations.
Firstly, the first public interview made by then-CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin was over six hours after the outage began, and after the Minister for Communications, Michelle Rowland, called on the telco to provide an update. Before Rosmarin’s public appearance on ABC’s RN Breakfast, communications from Optus were via social media posts – which customers presumably could not access due to the outage.
“In the Committee’s view, it stretches credulity that Optus did not think to update the Australian public sooner and in a more accessible way given the severity of the circumstances,” the report read.
Secondly, evidence to the Committee found that the lack of timely information from Optus caused severe challenges for emergency service organisations, and the telco “appeared to neglect” effective crisis management in its communication with essential services and Government.
The inquiry also slammed Optus for its “inability to improve on its past”, referring to the malicious data breach from the previous year.
“The failure of Optus to provide credible, honest and forthright information during the outage… suggests that Optus’ processes for learning from past incidents have not been effective,” the report read.
Overall, the Senate Committee made seven recommendations in the report, including a call for a mandatory plan for telcos that “obliges them” to communicate effectively during outages.
It recommended that the Federal Government work with telcos to examine large-scale network roaming arrangements for major outages, and that it should amend the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act 2018 to clarify that telcos are included as critical infrastructure providers.
The report also suggested that the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman be directed to develop a dispute resolution mechanism to ensure “appropriate compensation” in the event of another mass outage. While broadband and mobile services are not currently covered under the Consumer Service Guarantee, the Committee said that the Optus outage exemplifies the fact that current regulation is not “fit for purpose” and a review on the guarantee is warranted.
Keep up to date with the latest in media and marketing
Got a tip?
Lauren McNamara was the associate editor at Mumbrella. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS. She left Mumbrella in August 2025.
Linkedin
Have your say