The Bean Review final report, released today, outlined key changes necessary for the telecommunications industry following the Optus outage that impacted millions of Australians last year. The report specifically pointed out the lack of obligations for telcos to prioritize restoring access to the triple-0 emergency services during outages, resulting in thousands of failed attempts to contact emergency services.
One significant recommendation from the report was the establishment of a mandatory code obligating carriers to notify the community, government, and other telecommunications entities about disruptions to the triple-0 system. The review emphasized the inadequacy of current voluntary communication guidelines provided to telcos, calling for more stringent mandatory communication requirements during major outages.
The report scrutinized Optus for its poor communication with customers during the outage, indicating that the telco failed to provide detailed information and time frames regarding the outage's rectification. It also highlighted a problem with Optus's 3G network as a key cause of the outage, which led to emergency calls getting lost due to towers not functioning. Optus has since made changes to prevent a similar situation from occurring in the future, but concerns remain about the potential impact once both Optus and Telstra shut down their 3G networks.