Girls browse on their mobile phones in front of Australian communications company Optus outlet in the central business districk of Sydney on November 8, 2023. The company faces a government review into the breakdown, little more than a year after it was hit by a major cyberattack. — AFP
The Australia-wide outage that struck Optus last week occurred when incorrect routing information cascaded through the network following a software upgrade, according to the telecommunications company, which said it has made changes so the issue can’t happen again.
Optus, owned by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, suffered the crash early Wednesday, leaving millions of customers without mobile and internet services, as well as disrupting public transport, health providers and bank transactions. The company faces a government review into the breakdown, little more than a year after it was hit by a major cyberattack.
In a statement Monday, Optus said getting its network back up and running proved to be a lengthy operation, in some cases requiring it to physically reconnect or reboot routers.
The complexity of the repair work partly explains why it took so long for Optus to reconnect customers who were cut off for most of the day. The company was criticised for its lack of communications following the outage.
“Our investigations into the issue took longer than we would have liked as we examined several different paths to restoration,” Optus said in an explanation posted on its website. “We have made changes to the network to address this issue so that it cannot occur again.”
The crash exposed Australia’s modern-day reliance on phone companies for a range of services. Train commuters stranded in Melbourne found themselves unable to call for ride-share services like Uber, while home workers were stuck without a web connection. Westpac Banking Corp said it was unable to take some calls because of the issue. – Bloomberg
