An illuminated sign is displayed in the window of an outlet for the Australian communications company Optus in Sydney on Nov 9, 2023. (PHOTO / AFP)

The Australian government has ordered an inquiry into a massive network failure that hit the country’s second largest telecoms provider Optus on Nov 8.

Up to 10 million customers were left without mobile, landline and internet access for more than 12 hours that day, and many utilities and businesses were brought to a standstill.

What the government needs to do now is to increase its oversight and hold any organization that is part of the national critical infrastructure to a higher standard of performance

Industry experts say the catastrophic outage was likely due to a "single point of failure", a lack of backup systems, or both.

READ MORE: Optus: Massive Australia outage was after software upgrade

Dennis Desmond, a lecturer in cybersecurity, cyber intelligence and cryptography at the School of Science, Technology and Engineering, University of the Sunshine Coast, said it is difficult to say with any degree of certainty what caused the outage, without “knowing the true nature of the outage”.

“If we accept Optus’ explanation that the outage was a result of a ‘technical fault’ then we must accept the failure was the result of an internal error, possibly due to a firmware of software update, a device replacement or upgrade, or some other human error,” he told China Daily.

“If it was the result of a firmware of software patch or upgrade, one has to ask whether or not the software was evaluated in a test environment first rather than deploying directly to a live network environment.” 

Desmond said that if the outage was the result of another kind of human error, Optus needs to be clear about how the error occurred and reassure its customer base that this error will not occur again.

“The question also needs to be asked, why was there no failover procedure and why is there no system to allow subscribers to access critical services through telecom providers accepting other users through roaming or through other agreements …”

Desmond noted that the outage also negatively impacted the other telecoms carriers, as well causing a nationwide failure. 

“In this case, the government needs to step in and ensure the carriers work together, have disaster recovery plans, and technologies in place to ensure continued, resilient, and reliable service.”

What the government needs to do now is to increase its oversight and hold any organization that is part of the national critical infrastructure to a higher standard of performance, he said.

Australia’s communications minister, Michelle Rowland, said on Nov 9, while announcing the inquiry into the Optus outage, that the impact of the loss of telecoms connectivity was “concerning”

“The government must ensure that any company that does business in Australia that becomes a part of the critical infrastructure must adhere to very specific requirements that ensures reliability and resilience and a continuity of operations capability that includes backups, a strong cybersecurity posture, and the ability to shift to alternatives in the event of a natural or manmade disaster,” Desmond said.

Konstanty Bialkowski, a senior lecturer at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Queensland, said: “Unfortunately I don’t believe it is possible to completely make things disaster tolerant.

“To put things in perspective, although this is probably one of the largest and also longest outages, Telstra (Australia’s biggest telecom provider) also had an outage in 2018 which lasted several hours.” 

Bialkowski noted that Australia has three providers of cellular connectivity — Telstra, Optus and Vodaphone — and a large number of resellers that use these networks.

“From a personal or business perspective, it is important to have backup and fallback options. Fully relying on a single other point of failure for a critical business function is a significant risk.”

Australia’s communications minister, Michelle Rowland, said on Nov 9, while announcing the inquiry into the Optus outage, that the impact of the loss of telecoms connectivity was “concerning”.

She told ABC radio: “It is critical the government conducts a process to identify lessons to be learned from the outage.”

“I will task my department with developing the terms of reference for a post incident review.”

Rowland said the review will aim to shed light on what went wrong, and the findings can help providers improve their response in network infrastructure incidents in future.

READ MORE: Australia to probe Optus outage as customers seek compensation

“I think the terms of reference here also need to apply across the industry because we need to take those lessons for the other carriers and service providers as well,” she said.

Apart from the government investigation, Australia’s upper house of parliament —the Senate — will hold its own inquiry which will have the power “to compel Optus bosses to appear publicly and provide the answers and the solutions that Australians deserve”, inquiry chair Sarah Hanson-Young said.

“The inquiry will also look into the role of the Commonwealth Government in ensuring Australians have access to essential, reliable telecommunications going forward,” the senator said.

Contact the writer at karlwilson@chinadailyapac.com