The latest move follows a catastrophic emergency services failure in September that has been linked to two deaths, putting Optus and its Singaporean owner under intense political and regulatory scrutiny. The inquiry is now shifting focus from frontline Optus executives to the Australian members of Singtel’s 12-person board who help shape strategy for the local carrier. This comes after earlier hearings where the committee examined how the outage unfolded and why critical alerts to regulators and government were delayed.
Senators plan to call the Australian directors of Singtel to a third hearing scheduled for the week of February 16, using the parliament’s power to compel domestic witnesses to appear even though that power does not extend to executives based overseas. Optus’ top leadership is also expected to return to answer questions about how the company handled the incident, including why it informed Singtel’s leadership and the stock exchange so quickly but took almost six hours to notify the communications regulator and more than seven hours to brief the federal communications portfolio. At the same time politicians want clear answers on how Singtel allocates capital to Optus, given that the group has invested about $9.3 billion in the Australian business over the past five years yet former insiders argue essential areas such as staffing, IT and network robustness have not kept pace.
The broader picture appears to be of a company grappling with the gap between headline investment figures and the real-world reliability of critical services such as emergency calls and basic email access. An independent review has already recommended an overhaul of Optus’ seven-member Australian board and criticised both Optus and its network partner for missing multiple warning signs, with at least 10 errors reportedly preventing hundreds of emergency calls from connecting. Optus is now moving its mobile network operations back onshore and insists it is not underinvesting, but the Senate inquiry, recent email outages and a steady flow of complaints to the industry ombudsman suggest the telco still faces a long and very public process to rebuild trust in its technology, governance and customer safeguards.
