Optus outage updates: Services 'gradually' restored as experts warn outage exposes serious vulnerabilities in Australian networks — as it happened

Thank you very much for joining us today as we brought you live coverage of the Optus outage.

We hope that you are safe and well.

Please take care and good night.

CEO of the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre, Rachael Falk, has echoed engineers and digital security experts in saying that today's outage exposed how vulnerable Australian telcos are.

"There is a fragility there, absolutely. It is one that I think we all need to consider and we can't go backwards from the reliance, but what we can do is understand the fragility of the telco network," she told ABC's Sarah Ferguson.

"I think governments get that. There's a bunch of legislation around network security. But, today, 12 hours was a long time to be without crucial services.

"It highlights that telecommunications companies are the back bone of everything connected to the internet. If a telco goes down ... you literally cannot function."

ABC's Sarah Ferguson has asked Rachael Falk what she thought about Optus's communication with customers today.

Falk used to be Telstra's National Security Advisor and is now the CEO of the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre.

"Today wasn't a day to be a shy CEO. You needed your CEO front and centre out today, early in the morning, hitting every major network, giving pressers left, right and centre. You can't have enough communication on a day like today," she said.

"Unfortunately, I don't think we saw that. I'm prepared to forgive Optus for potentially being all on the Optus network but today was not the day for the Optus CEO to be shy."

Rachael Falk, who is the CEO of the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre, has spoken to ABC's Sarah Ferguson.

She was asked whether the Optus outage meant that the telco didn't have enough layers of redundancy to prevent a major failure.

"I think that is right," Falk said.

"You can call it whatever you want, the CEO can say, deep technical faults, major engineering issue — it is what it is. It had significant consequences."

Ferguson then asked Falk why she thinks the service took so long to be restored.

"I can only imagine a couple of things. They realised it impacted all their services ... and I don't know this, but I suspect they were also all themselves internally using Optus devices," Falk said.

"If you are reliant on your own Optus mobile and you're execs and have Optus Wi-Fi and mobile, you all can't communicate — I imagine that caused a bit of a problem."

A marketing expert says today's Optus outage may do serious reputational damage.

Optus also came under fire last year after it was hacked, leading to information leaks affecting more than 2.5 million customers.

Australian National University marketing expert Dr Andrew Hughes says this latest incident could do even more damage.

"The one last year, by the way, their brand value slipped by around one billion dollars in 2022 — that's how big it was," he says.

"So this time around you can sort of expect to have maybe even a bit higher because the people that stayed with them last time, may be thinking again this time, 'You know what, we keep on hearing the same language, but we're seeing the same action as well'."

A digital security researcher from the University of Queensland says telecommunications operators are by law required to have contingencies in place for incidents like today's outage.

"The question really is was this such a big incident it actually might have affected the redundancies Optus already had in place," Dr Brendan Walker-Munro said.

"And if that's the case, then it's actually a really big problem for Optus that they're going to want to address quickly."

Echoing Engineers Australia, he said the Optus incident shows when critical infrastructure stops working, the effects can be widespread.

"And it's not just at the individual level, you're also talking about those market businesses, people who can't use EFTPOS, it really has a big ripple effect through society."

Some of our readers say they still haven't been able to access their mobile and internet services after Optus announced they were restored.

These comments were sent to us in the past half hour.

WiFi still not working, and mobile data is back but very very shaky. Disappointed they'd blanket say everything is resolved.

- Sarah

Feels a bit disingenuous from Optus to say "restored" when that clearly isn't 100% so. My Optus NBN is still out, and I've given my equipment a couple of chances to restart in the last half hour

- Nick

Optus says it's customers should now have their internet back ,However we still have no Internet on hold with Optus😞

- Margaret Bay

NBN in Brisbane is still not restored, contrary to what the Optus CEO is saying. Appalling treatment of customers and my last day of being an Optus customer after 18 years.

- Pat

Engineers Australia has also urged businesses to to assess their systems for weak points amidst the Optus network disruptions.

"Cascading risk can result from various factors, such as extreme weather events, cyberattacks, or geopolitical events," Chief Engineer Jane MacMaster says.

"Australia has witnessed several instances of cascading risk in the past, including the 2016 electricity system blackout in South Australia and the recent impact on transport networks and vital services during bushfires.

"I think a lot of companies across Australia today – small, medium enterprises and the larger ones — will be internalising this a little bit and focusing on their own systems to understand where are our risks, where are our quality management systems, where do we need to put more focus to make our vulnerability as low as we can make it."

MacMaster says although we should expect these sorts of disruptions to be kept at a minimum, it will require "a concerted effort" on risk and quality management to keep them that way.

Engineers Australia says the Optus outage has exposed vulnerabilities in Australia's telecommunications networks.

Jane MacMaster, who is the Chief Engineer at Engineers Australia, says outages like this create a domino effect on our digital systems and economy.

"I think society is heading in a direction where we're very reliant on modern technology and part of the challenge is that technology is becoming increasingly complex and increasingly connected," she says.

"So if there's a problem in one part of all our systems it's very easily felt in other parts because the connections are there."

Today's outage disrupted everything from trains to hospitals, bank call centres, information lines, and the ability of millions of consumers to access services.

A gym in Canberra had to scramble to put together impromptu classes and turned away a handful of clients after all of their systems went down this morning.

UBX Belconnen manager Christopher Murphy said it had been "panic stations" for staff throughout the day as the gym relied on a constant feed of circuit-style workouts fed through WIFI-connected TVs for its operations.

Mr Murphy said the event had put a lot of strain and extra staff had to be called in to try and manage the disruption by making up workouts and resorting to whiteboards with instructions.

"Our operations were messed around … it does put a sour taste in people's mouths because this is their stress relief," he told the ABC.

"Internet service is a needed service — we just want reliability."

Mr Murphy said the gym would likely change internet providers after the disruption.

Reporting by Lottie Twyford

Optus has posted a new update on X, formerly known as Twitter, confirming that their services have been restored and "customers should now be able to be back online".

The telco, once again, thanked customers for their patience.

While Optus's CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has said that the telco's services are now fully restored, there may still be a delay before that change takes effect on your personal device.

"The way that we restored services meant that we had to bring services online on a progressive basis so that has been rolling out throughout the day," Rosmarin said.

About half an hour ago, Optus told customers on its website that it was "continuing" to restore connectivity.

It said the service should restore automatically, though some customers may need to restart their device or turn airplane mode on and off again.

Earlier today, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland described the Optus outage as a "deep network" problem.

Now, Optus chief Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has revealed that it was a "technical network fault" but did not provide further details.

So what does that actually mean?

Here's an explanation of the factors that can cause such events:

Optus chief Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has just spoken to ABC's News Channel about the outage.

You can watch the full interview below:

Optus has just posted a new update on its website.

It says internet and phone services "are continuing to be restored".

"Service will be automatically restored," the statement says.

"Some customers may need to restart their device or turn airplane mode on then off."

Here's the rest of the statement:

Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has repeated her apologies for the outage but says the company cannot provide further detail about the outage until it conducts a thorough investigation.

"In my three and a half years, as the CEO of Optus, we've never had an outage of this nature," she said.

"So it's a very rare occurrence, but unfortunately, it does happen. It happens to telcos all around the world. It happens to other telcos in Australia.

"We try and avoid it happening and we will make sure we learn as much as we possibly can from what occurred and hopefully keep it as an extremely rare occurrence."

You can read more about what she said here:

Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin says the company's services have been restored after today's major network outage affected millions of Australians.

In an interview with the ABC, she said the cause was a "technical network issue" and a "thorough, root-cause analysis" would be conducted by the company before more information could be provided.

Ms Bayer Rosmarin said such an outage was a "very rare occurrence" that happens to telcos around the world, including to other telcos in Australia.

When asked about possible compensation, she said the company had been focused on restoring services but "would now start thinking about ways in which we can thank customers for their patience... and rewarding them for their loyalty to Optus".

Well-spotted, Lain!

For those of you just tuning in, here's the picture we shared earlier as reference:

At the Northern Territory’s largest shopping centre, Casuarina Square in Darwin, businesses and customers have been impacted by the outage.

One handbag store has been unable to make any sales, with staff estimating it has lost $1,000 in business.

Kalliopi Hatzimihali, who manages a store at the centre, said when she tried to serve customers, no payments could be processed.

"It’s really hard, because I am trying to fix it, but I can’t,” she says.

"We’re losing customers. We’re losing sales."

Retail employee Tianna Gilchrist  said she was furious and wanted to change phone providers.

"I was affected by the cybersecurity breach last year as well,” she said.

Reporting by Myles Houlbrook-Walk