Optus network outage: Technology expert Trevor Long explains the ‘deep flaw’ that likely caused 10 million customers to lose service

Australia’s Communications Minister has revealed that the cause of the catastrophic technical failure that hit Optus today is a ‘deep flaw’ in the network.

More than 10 million Optus customers woke up on Wednesday morning to find their phones suddenly had no reception or internet access due to one of the biggest telecommunications disruptions in Australian history.

The outage was first reported at 4am on Wednesday, with Optus mobile users unable to make calls or send texts, and the telecoms provider’s mobile network and home broadband were also down.

The telco announced that services would be gradually restored to customers around 1 p.m., but that this process could take “several hours.”

Speaking to the media on Wednesday morning, Federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowland blamed the problem on a “deep flaw” in the network, without providing further details.

Confused by the term, Ny Breaking Australia asked technology expert Trevor Long what was meant by a ‘deep error’. He said the minister most likely wanted to describe a “monumental problem with the Optus network”.

Mr Long, a high-profile commentator on Australian technology since 2007, described the Optus crash as “the largest telecommunications failure in Australian history”.

“We have never had an outage on a mobile network that also extended to the same telco’s broadband network,” he told Ny Breaking Australia.

He believes that through no fault of their own, neither Minister Rowland nor Optus CEO Kelly Rosmarin know what caused the problem and when customers’ services will be fully restored.

“I don’t think the minister really knows what’s wrong because even the CEO (of Optus) has admitted they’ve tried everything and nothing has worked,” he said.

“What they need to do is make it clear that this is a huge problem so that we can essentially set our expectations that this could continue for a while.”

Mr Long also revealed that while some explanations for the outages can be ruled out, other experts are left scratching their heads as to what caused the problem.

“There are people in the telecommunications industry who say to me, ‘This doesn’t make sense, this is something we’ve never seen before,’” he said.

Mr Long almost completely ruled out that a cyber attack or a failed update could be the cause of the outages.

“Fingerprints of a cyber attack would have been seen by now… While I don’t think Optus will rule this out… I think a cyber attack is less likely,” he said.

“If it had been a system update last night, the team would have resolved the issue… by rolling the update back to where you were yesterday.

‘So it feels like a technical defect in a device that is very difficult to repair.’

Mr Long said Optus engineers could be looking for a needle in a haystack as they figure out what went wrong.

“You have to imagine that a company like Optus has rooms and rooms full of computers running the network,” Mr Long said.

“So finding the error is clearly causing them problems.”

He believes that one of the many problems in the network is a so-called routing problem, as a small number of customers reported being able to use their broadband.

Mr. Long compared a routing problem to a traffic light that processes “billions of requests a day” and suddenly stops functioning.

While some requests may get through, the traffic lights instead allow even more requests to be processed.

However, this only concerns internet access, which is likely to involve a much ‘deeper’ problem.

He warned customers that the problem could last well into the evening, after they already suffered more than half of their working day on Wednesday.

He also urged Ms Rosmarin to contact both Telstra and Vodafone to allow her customers to make calls on their networks until customer access is restored.

Telstra already offers domestic roaming to customers of other telecom companies during disasters.

Mr Long urged Optus to be “open and transparent” about the cause of the problem when they discover what happened.

While customers still cannot make calls or use the internet from their phones, Mr Long reminded them that Telstra payphones offer free Wi-Fi and phone calls.

“All you need is to know the number you’re calling,” he said.

Ms Rowland echoed Mr Long’s sentiments, saying Optus needed to be transparent with its customers, who were experiencing “high levels of anxiety and frustration”.

“Consumers will make judgments about the quality of service they receive in a competitive market,” she told reporters.

‘It is important at this time that people get their services back as quickly as possible.’

Speaking to ABC Sydney at 11am, Ms Rosmarin said the company still had no idea what was plaguing their systems.

“We will do everything we can to get services back,” she told ABC Radio Sydney via WhatsApp.

“The teams are trying many different angles and we will not rest until the service is available again to our customers.”

The telco announced that calling the emergency services via the landline was also disrupted by the disruptions.

Melbourne’s Northern Health district said their hospitals’ phone lines had been affected.

“All phone lines to Northern Health campuses are currently affected by an Optus outage,” they said.

Optus mobile and internet services are being gradually restored after a nationwide outage left millions of Australians without connections for almost nine hours.

“It may take a few hours for all services to be restored and during that time different services may be restored in different locations,” an Optus statement said.

“We reiterate our apologies to customers for the national service outage that occurred this morning.”