Post-incident review following Optus outage

Media Release from the Hon Michelle Rowland MP, Minister for Communications

MEDIA RELEASE | Thursday 09 November 2023

The Federal Government will undertake a post-incident telecommunications review into the Optus outage that affected millions of Australians yesterday.

Connectivity is absolutely essential for Australian consumers and businesses, and the impacts of this outage were particularly concerning.

While we welcome that Optus services were restored over the course of the day, it is critical the Government conducts a process to identify lessons to be learned from yesterday’s outage.

I will task my Department with developing the terms of reference for a post-incident review. Further announcements around the terms of reference and next steps will be made in due course.

It is critical that industry and Governments take stock following large-scale outages, given no network is immune.

The Government hopes the review may also help support major telecommunications providers to improve post-outage processes.

Additionally, the regulator – the Australian Communications and Media Authority – has independently commenced an assessment to investigate Optus’ compliance with the rules requiring that emergency calls are successfully carried from mobile carriers to the Emergency Call Person (Telstra).