It’s fascinating how when you step back, this is a regular business that sells a service. Little different to any subscription service.
And the service is reliable almost 100% of the time. But because we the customers take that reliability for granted, the business is blamed if something bad happens in that 0.0001 of the time.
This is a regular company. In theory, they could close up shop and just leave. But they’re being treated as though the very thought of not being able to use the service is a massive deal.
This same company makes you sign an agreement when you join up saying you understand their service is not 100% reliable and should not be used if you require perfect access to emergency services.
Imagine your ISP getting a 12 million dollar fine when they have an outage.
The issue is the guarantee that Optus have with the government regarding the infrastructure they have installed; it involves their provision of access to 000.
That must not be interrupted and mitigations must be in place to route around any disruption, extending to cross connecting to other infrastructure providers without delay. Only if all carriers are involved (eg. natural disaster taking out an areas cell towers) does the liability reduce. They’re still required to re-establish connectivity as soon as possible though.
In failing to meet that guarantee, they’re liable for severe penalties.
And no, as infrastructure providers involved with 000/112, they can’t up stakes and leave just because they feel like it.
(Ex-PMG/Telecom/Telstra bloke)
Bit of a false correlation - your average ISP doesn’t own and resell infrastructure, which is what failed here.
Optus infrastructure went down - infrastructure they not only use themselves but also resell and arrange with other infrastructure providers to provide service extensions to. And it went down for preventable reasons, and it was down an EXTREMELY long time for something that is such a fundamental part of the business. It was a huge fuckup that had massive ramifications.
I’m not defending or particularly interested in the outage. If their service is unsatisfactory, leave them. That’s business and they probably deserve it.
What I find amazing is that they’re being held to a standard that no other private business is held to. I see no fundamental difference between this company offering a service and any other.
Forget tech, compare them to Macca’s. Imagine a service outage that meant Macca’s couldn’t sell you burgers today. You’d shrug and take your business elsewhere.
Optus is getting brought before the government for a “Please explain” and a $12 Million fine. Yes, they own infrastructure. That’s my point. It’s theirs. They can in theory decide to just stop offering their product tomorrow.
Somehow we have reached a point where enough people totally rely on their service that they face this level of scrutiny when they stuff up.
Well, we privatised our national carrier, so who else are we going to hold accountable for people being able to call emergency services?
I think you’re also failing to understand the concept that Optus don’t just get to operate with zero conditions. They hold a license to operate their service, and one of the conditions of that license is providing emergency service access.
Forget tech, compare them to Macca’s. Imagine a service outage that meant Macca’s couldn’t sell you burgers today. You’d shrug and take your business elsewhere.
Kinda yeah but nah, I see this with apps like Duolingo where people bitch endlessly about it, I’m like if you hate it so much just go use another app :| why are you rewarding them with your subscription money if you hate it so much?
But Telcos are regulated by these guys:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Communications_and_Media_Authority
We recently had this requirement (thanks to Optus 🫥) handed to us all:
https://www.acma.gov.au/rules-significant-and-major-outages
If we want to make sure we don’t get fined we all agree to implement this rule (despite being a pain in the ass) and all the other rules they set for us
the equivalent would be regulations that Maccas have to agree to in order to sell burgers, so I assume it would be something like food safety standards? https://www.health.gov.au/topics/food-and-nutrition/about/food-standards-and-safety
So if Maccas screw up and violate one of these standards then they are fined and if it was a big enough issue where multiple people died I assume they’d be dragged before the government for a please explain and maybe even shut down until the issue was fixed
Telstra got fucked for the same thing literally last year though
Telstra is a different matter. The government still has hooks into them. They’re under contractual obligations and service level agreements and if they breach those, there are financial penalties.
I suppose Optus must have signed something with the government also? Though I don’t recall reading anything about it. I can’t think under what other pretext the government can just issue a huge fine for not providing a product.
You mean the emergency call rules that all telcos must abide by to operate in Australia?
Which is what they’re fined for being in breach of.
Dude, no, they didn’t sign shit. They are just covered by the Telecommunications Act. If they want to operate in Australia, they have to provide access to emergency services. This is pretty standard stuff globally.
https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2004A05145/2025-04-04/2025-04-04/text/original/pdf/1
