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Comment on Three people died after Optus network failure impacted triple-0 calls

I’m not defending or particularly interested in the outage. If their service is unsatisfactory, leave them. That’s business and they probably deserve it.

What I find amazing is that they’re being held to a standard that no other private business is held to. I see no fundamental difference between this company offering a service and any other.

Forget tech, compare them to Macca’s. Imagine a service outage that meant Macca’s couldn’t sell you burgers today. You’d shrug and take your business elsewhere.

Optus is getting brought before the government for a “Please explain” and a $12 Million fine. Yes, they own infrastructure. That’s my point. It’s theirs. They can in theory decide to just stop offering their product tomorrow.

Somehow we have reached a point where enough people totally rely on their service that they face this level of scrutiny when they stuff up.

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princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Well, we privatised our national carrier, so who else are we going to hold accountable for people being able to call emergency services?

I think you’re also failing to understand the concept that Optus don’t just get to operate with zero conditions. They hold a license to operate their service, and one of the conditions of that license is providing emergency service access.

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Eyekaytee@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

Forget tech, compare them to Macca’s. Imagine a service outage that meant Macca’s couldn’t sell you burgers today. You’d shrug and take your business elsewhere.

Kinda yeah but nah, I see this with apps like Duolingo where people bitch endlessly about it, I’m like if you hate it so much just go use another app :| why are you rewarding them with your subscription money if you hate it so much?

But Telcos are regulated by these guys:

en.wikipedia.org/…/Australian_Communications_and_…

We recently had this requirement (thanks to Optus 🫥) handed to us all:

acma.gov.au/rules-significant-and-major-outages

If we want to make sure we don’t get fined we all agree to implement this rule (despite being a pain in the ass) and all the other rules they set for us

the equivalent would be regulations that Maccas have to agree to in order to sell burgers, so I assume it would be something like food safety standards? www.health.gov.au/…/food-standards-and-safety

So if Maccas screw up and violate one of these standards then they fined and if it was a big enough issue where multiple people died I assume they’d be dragged before the government for a please explain and maybe even shut down until the issue was fixed

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Taleya@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Telstra got fucked for the same thing literally last year though

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- Nath@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Telstra is a different matter. The government still has hooks into them. They’re under contractual obligations and service level agreements and if they breach those, there are financial penalties.
  
  I suppose Optus must have signed something with the government also? Though I don’t recall reading anything about it. I can’t think under what other pretext the government can just issue a huge fine for not providing a product.
  
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  - princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Dude, no, they didn’t sign shit. They are just covered by the Telecommunications Act. If they want to operate in Australia, they have to provide access to emergency services. This is pretty standard stuff globally.
    
    www.legislation.gov.au/C2004A05145/…/1
    
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  - Taleya@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    You mean the emergency call rules that all telcos must abide by to operate in Australia?
    
    Which is what they’re fined for being in breach of.
    
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