More than 14,000 Optus services in Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula were affected by a mobile phone outage on Tuesday morning, with the telco warning calls to emergency services could be impacted. The outage began at about 9am, and Optus blamed vandals for cutting cables at one of its infrastructure sites in an attempt to steal copper wiring.
Optus spokesperson Jane McNamara told ABC Radio Melbourne that technicians had been at the site since early morning and that photo evidence showed a deliberate cut. She said copper had been removed from the pit and Victoria Police had been contacted. The ABC understands no Triple Zero calls were disrupted.
According to the Optus website, the issue was caused by an aerial fibre break, meaning customers could only call emergency services if they were within coverage of another mobile network or could call via wi-fi. The incident follows recent nationwide outages that cut off Triple Zero access, one of which has been linked to two deaths.
Federal shadow communications minister Melissa McIntosh called for the Triple Zero network to be listed as essential services under critical infrastructure, citing the frequency of such incidents. Optus is already subject to a Senate inquiry following the September outage linked to two deaths.
Optus chief executive Stephen Rue told the inquiry in November that the company had taken steps to improve processes, including daily Triple Zero test calls and plans to move emergency call centres back onshore. An independent review into technical failures is expected by year's end.
Monash University optical communications expert Bill Corcoran explained that Australia's increasing data demand relies on physical fibre optic connections, which can be vulnerable. He noted that redundancy is usually built into networks to prevent complete blackouts.
