The Australian government declared on Thursday that they will begin an inquiry into the 12-hour outage of telco Optus, which caused a disruption of internet and phone connections to almost half of the nation, including essential services such as payments, transportation, and medical facilities. More than 10 million people, or 40 percent of the population, were affected by the network blackout at the country’s second-largest telecom firm for much of Wednesday, leading to widespread outrage and worries about the telecommunications infrastructure. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland stated that the government will conduct a post-incident review into the outage, which she called “particularly concerning.” The media regulator will also do a separate review into the outage after emergency calls (“000”) went down on Optus landlines. Optus, owned by Singapore Telecommunications, has not given the source of the unprecedented blackout, one of the largest the country has seen. But they have ruled out any cyber hacks. The government hopes the probe will suggest ways to enhance the post-outage processes of major telecommunications providers, such as Telstra. The government will also assess the possibility of allowing customers to switch to available networks when outages occur.
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