More than 14,000 Optus customers lost phone service Tuesday morning in Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula areas south-east of Melbourne. According to Optus, the criminals at one of their locations severed the cables to get hold of the copper wiring. The blackout started around 9 a.m., and thus the mobile phone services were out of order for a few hours.
Optus advised the users that making emergency calls could be a problem. At a later stage, the company, however, stated that, as per their understanding, there weren’t any interruptions to the Triple Zero calls. The staff who were on the spot solved the issue and reactivated the service at 11:20 am.
What Went Wrong?
Jane McNamara is a spokesperson for Optus. McNamara said the technicians had been at the site of the fault from the very early hours of the morning. The company has no shortage of unmistakable photo evidence showing that a person made a cut in the cables. They are positive that copper was removed from the pit. Optus has handed over the matter of the theft to Victoria Police.
This outage came from a Telstra pit on the Mornington Peninsula, where someone cut a fibre cable. Per the Optus website, the problem was an “aerial fibre break.” This meant customers could only call emergency services if they were close enough to another mobile network. Some customers with wi-fi calling ability could also get through that way.
Bill Corcoran teaches at Monash University and knows about optical communications. He said that the growing demand for data within Australia means we increasingly rely upon physical fibre optic connections. Mobile phone towers have to have very fast connections down into the network. The connection that was broken on Tuesday was an aerial optical fibre. Lots of fibres go underground but sometimes it works better to put cables along the power lines you see in the street.
How It Affected Regular People
Caleb’s an Optus customer who got off the train in Frankston on Tuesday morning. That’s when he lost mobile phone service. He went several hours without reception. Caleb said he might’ve missed a family milestone because of the outage. His sister was giving birth. His mum tried to message him about it. He only found out later that his sister was alright. Caleb said he felt pretty happy knowing she was okay, but disappointed he missed the news when it happened.
Calls for Better Protection
Melissa McIntosh is the federal shadow communications minister. She called on the government to do more to protect the Triple Zero system. McIntosh referred to a similar incident that took place in Dapto, New South Wales, two months beforehand. She said these incidents happen too often and require action.
McIntosh believes the Triple Zero network should fall under the category of essential services on critical infrastructure. She questioned how the public is accessing telecommunications infrastructure. If thieves could cut cables that easily, something needs to change in terms of security.
Optus Under Pressure
In recent months, Optus has received heavy criticism over how it handles service outages. A Senate inquiry is looking into Optus following a September outage. That outage was linked to the deaths of two people who couldn’t reach emergency services. The company got even more scrutiny when it came out that they held 11 crisis meetings and waited almost a day before telling the government about the deaths.
Stephen Rue is the Optus chief executive. In November, he told the Senate inquiry that Optus had taken several steps to improve its processes since the major outage. Those include daily Triple Zero test calls, protocols to check Triple Zero connectivity during upgrades and planning to shift call centres for emergencies from Manila back to Australia. Optus also commissioned an independent review into the technical failures. That should be finished before the end of the year.
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