Optus is under close scrutiny after its parent company, Singtel, cut funding for the telco’s network upgrades by $237 million over the past year. This cutback coincided with failures in emergency call services, raising fears about national telecom reliability. The move is aimed at reducing costs and increasing returns but appears to be compromising vital infrastructure. Singtel’s CEO is now planning a visit to Australia in response to the growing pressure.
This backlash follows several issues, particularly a 13-hour failure to detect faults in Triple Zero emergency calls. These faults may be linked to the recent deaths of three people. The outage occurred only a year after a nationwide crash in Optus’ systems. Despite earlier commitments to upgrade and stabilise its mobile network, investment dropped from $850 million in 2024 to $613 million.
Optus has entered crisis mode. A daily board-level investigation is underway, a group technology officer has been deployed from Singapore, and an independent review has begun. Despite these measures, criticism regarding the company’s transparency and failure to promptly identify and address the outage continues to grow. The situation is being worsened by Optus’ dependence on overseas call centres, primarily in the Philippines and India, where emergency complaints were first received but not properly escalated.
Meanwhile, rivals such as Telstra and TPG, which had already started relocating customer support back to Australia, stand to benefit. Analysts estimate that Optus could lose about 44,000 post-paid customers each quarter during the next financial year. Its post-paid market share is expected to decline from 33.3% to 32.3%, with Telstra and TPG likely to gain from the fallout and increase earnings by up to $55 million and $24 million respectively.
The incident points to broader tensions between multinational cost-saving policies and the essential service requirements of Australia. With more Australians relying on mobile networks for daily needs and emergencies, both funding and service quality are emerging as matters of national concern rather than simple business challenges.
