By Renju Jose SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had raised the recent deadly outage of Singtel-owned Optus’s emergency call number with his Singaporean counterpart, Lawrence Wong, in a bilateral meeting held in Canberra on Wednesday. Two back-to-back outages of the emergency “000” number last month have intensified scrutiny of Optus, Australia’s […]
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Australia’s Albanese raises deadly Optus emergency call outage with Singapore PM
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By Renju Jose
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had raised the recent deadly outage of Singtel-owned Optus’s emergency call number with his Singaporean counterpart, Lawrence Wong, in a bilateral meeting held in Canberra on Wednesday.
Two back-to-back outages of the emergency “000” number last month have intensified scrutiny of Optus, Australia’s second largest telecom operator. The outages occurred less than a fortnight apart and affected thousands, with the first glitch linked to four deaths because customers were unable to get timely aid.
“I raised the issue and we had a discussion. I thank Prime Minister Wong for the condolences he offered to the families and his support for strong follow-up action,” Albanese said at a joint press conference after the meeting.
Wong said he expected Optus and Singapore Telecommunications, majority owned by Singapore’s state-run Temasek Holdings, to act responsibly, comply fully with Australian laws and cooperate with the ongoing inquiry.
“I understand fully the anger, frustration and outrage at what has happened because if this were to have happened in Singapore, I would feel the same. So from that point of view, we understand the sentiments,” Wong said.
Singtel boss Yuen Kuan Moon met with Australian authorities last week, amid calls from some analysts and lawmakers for Optus CEO Stephen Rue to resign and Optus to be stripped of its operating licence.
Albanese and Wong also entered into an agreement that they said would deepen the defence ties between the two countries.
“We will enhance our respective militaries’ reciprocal access to defence facilities in Australia and Singapore,” a joint statement released after the meeting said.
“This will include expanded access for the Australian Defence Force in Singapore in support of its regional presence and increased access for the Singapore Armed Forces to training areas in Australia.”
Both nations will also broaden cooperation in trade and investment to support their commercial interests in each other’s economies, the statement said.
(Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Tom Hogue and Lincoln Feast.)