The penalties Optus could face after its ‘second significant and egregious failure’

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has launched an investigation into the Optus triple-zero outage, with the communications minister warning there will be consequences for the telecommunications sector.

Optus could “expect to suffer significant consequences” after the outage, which is suspected to have contributed to three deaths.

Accountability and obligations

Communications Minister Anika Wells said Optus would be held accountable for failing to ensure emergency service calls were prioritised.

“They have perpetuated a failure upon the Australian people with what has happened here. They can expect to suffer significant consequences as a result,” Wells said on Monday.

What penalties could Optus face?

Wells confirmed the government is working to understand the factors that caused the outage, noting that ACMA has formally begun its investigation.

“This is the second significant and egregious failure on the part of Optus. But other telecommunications providers have also had triple-zero outages. This is not entirely a matter for Optus,” she added.

ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said the regulator would demand detailed information from Optus.

“We will need time to dig into what has exactly happened here. We will, as the regulator, be holding Optus to account for this second outage over the last couple of years,” she said.

She recalled the 2023 Optus outage, which led to the resignation of its CEO and penalties exceeding $12 million.

“We didn’t expect to be here again so soon, less than two years after that breach,” O’Loughlin said.

Financial penalties possible

While the law does not allow for criminal convictions in relation to the outage, Optus could face heavy financial sanctions.

“I won’t speculate on the size of penalties because they are complicated, in terms of the number of contraventions. But there are $19,000 per infringement notice, and the court can impose up to $250,000 per contravention,” O’Loughlin explained.

Optus CEO Stephen Rue acknowledged the company’s failure.

“We take full accountability for the technical failure and for the unacceptable gap in time that we were unaware of this,” Rue said.

Government response

Speaking in New York, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Optus’s actions were “completely unacceptable.”

“There’ll be a proper investigation by the authorities, and the government has action at its disposal. But the immediate concern will be that investigation,” he said.