So let me get this straight. After a data breach and a massive outage, their first move is to hint that a few employees are to blame for this tragedy? It's a classic playbook move to find a scapegoat.
Why would anyone take the *existing* legislation seriously if they don't stand to lose something if they don't live up to it? Individuals need accountability, or they know a fuckup like this just needs a ChatGPT script read with a solemn face and they can go on with their lives.
This is just another major crisis for Optus. It no longer has the technical capacity to operate a telecommunications network and its managerial class either doesn't know or doesn't care. As a corporation, Optus no longer serves any purpose and ought to be wound up.
I've done some work for a telco and I was surprised to find that emergency calls are routed over completely different infrastructure to ordinary calls, and it is not routinely tested.
There wasn't an automated way to test it, and most people never thought at all about the emergency call routing because it was such a low number of calls (I think single digits ever).
It's easy to see how you could accidentally break emergency calling and not notice.
Not sure which telco that is - but in the UK, impact on emergency calls is taken into account for every change that happens. This was non-negotiable in the 15 years I spent at a telco.
Friendly reminder to anyone who installs or maintains PABXes: test your emergency calling whenever you make change.
In Australia, you can call 000, say you’re testing a phone system, read out the Caller ID you’re supposed to be calling from, and they’ll confirm the number and location. This happens with the 000 operator, not the police/fire/ambulance operator you get transferred to in a real emergency.
Other countries may have different testing procedures.
That's only one side of it. Think about how much money they saved by offshoring and having """skilled""" migrants from India handling our technical infrastructure now.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 32.3 ms ] threadThey never had a say. Their parent Singtel were always effectively calling the shots.
There wasn't an automated way to test it, and most people never thought at all about the emergency call routing because it was such a low number of calls (I think single digits ever).
It's easy to see how you could accidentally break emergency calling and not notice.
In Australia, you can call 000, say you’re testing a phone system, read out the Caller ID you’re supposed to be calling from, and they’ll confirm the number and location. This happens with the 000 operator, not the police/fire/ambulance operator you get transferred to in a real emergency.
Other countries may have different testing procedures.