A Senate probe into the debacle was given the green light last week and will hold its first hearing on Monday.
Optus CEO Stephen Rue is set to be in the hot seat, alongside the company’s chairman John Arthur, former chairman Paul O’Sullivan, and CFO Michael Venter. These key figures are anticipated to answer a slew of challenging inquiries.
Officials from the communications watchdog, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, will also find themselves in the hot seat.
Senators are hoping to better understand what caused the September outage, which stopped hundreds of Australians from making triple-zero calls.
The inquiry will also examine the effectiveness of emergency arrangements designed to shift customers to another network if their telco has an outage.
Liberal backbencher Sarah Henderson, who is on the Senate committee, said she was determined to uncover exactly what went wrong.
“The coalition will put the fire to the feet of Optus, the government, the regulator and the hapless minister for communications,” she said in a statement.
Meanwhile, former opposition communications spokeswoman Henderson has been urging Communications Minister Anika Wells to appear before the inquiry. She seeks clarification on the timeline of the minister’s awareness of the outage, citing inconsistencies in the reported information.
“We will leave no stone unturned to uncover the truth and hold those responsible to account for what went wrong,” Henderson said.
The communications watchdog and Optus are both running investigations into the outage.
New rules that took effect on Saturday require telcos to report outages to the communications watchdog and emergency services in real time.
