Singtel shares fall 3.3% as new Optus outage affects 4,500, disrupts emergency calls
A Singtel delegation visits Australia this week to meet the country’s communications minister about an earlier outage linked to three deaths
[SINGAPORE] Shares of Singtel fell on Monday (Sep 29) morning as its Australian subsidiary Optus suffered a new outage over the weekend – not long after a similar incident at the unit led to a few deaths.
At 9.27 am, the stock fell to a one-month low in intraday trade at S$4.10, down 3.8 per cent or S$0.16 from Friday’s closing price of S$4.26, with 9.8 million shares traded. The last time Singtel shares traded lower than this was on Aug 22, ShareInvestor data showed.
The counter ended the day at S$4.12, down 3.3 per cent or S$0.14, with 60.5 million shares transacted. It was one of the most heavily traded stocks on the Singapore Exchange by volume on Monday.
On Sep 28, the unit suffered an outage that hit some 4,500 customers and disrupted calls made between 3 am and 12.20 pm – including emergency calls.
Optus said it confirmed with the police that callers who tried to make emergency calls were all right, and that it was investigating the cause of the issue, said to involve a mobile phone tower site in the Dapto area of New South Wales.
This latest outage unfolded ahead of a Singtel delegation’s meeting this week with Australia’s Communications Minister Anika Wells to discuss the fallout from the outage on Sep 18, which was linked to several fatalities, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
On Sep 18, a standard network upgrade resulted in a technical failure that affected emergency calls in parts of Australia, leading to three deaths. Welfare checks on households that attempted to make emergency calls revealed that three people were found dead, said Optus chief executive officer Stephen Rue at a Sep 19 press conference.
The Australian government has since started an investigation into the botched network upgrade that caused the deaths, and Wells said at a Sep 22 press conference that regulatory or legislative changes could be considered after the probe is completed.
In November 2023, another similar incident occurred when Optus experienced an Australia-wide outage that affected millions of customers, preventing some from making emergency calls. That incident cost former Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin her job, and the latest could threaten the position of Optus’ current boss, Rue.
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