7am Labor's guilt in the Optus failure
Sep 25, 2025
Michael Sainsbury, an investigative journalist from Crikey specializing in telecommunications, dives into the recent Optus outage that caused chaos by blocking triple-zero calls linked to three deaths. He unpacks the botched firewall upgrade and the failures of backup systems. Sainsbury also discusses Optus' governance issues and the political fallout, highlighting the government's shared responsibility in the crisis. With insights into stalled reforms and the need for better ministerial oversight, he offers a critical view of the communication sector's safety protocols.
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Routine Upgrade Triggered Major Failure
- The outage was caused by a routine firewall upgrade that went wrong, not a national network collapse.
- Michael Sainsbury says complex networks need better process checks to prevent such failures.
Prioritise 000 In Upgrade Checklists
- Telcos must implement and test failover checks for 000 routing before any network change.
- Michael Sainsbury emphasises double-checking triple zero connectivity on upgrade checklists.
Customers Warned Optus Multiple Times
- At least five customers called Optus to report 000 failures but those complaints were not escalated correctly.
- Michael Sainsbury notes these reports were handled by Optus' offshore call centre and not acted on immediately.