SINGTEL’S Australian unit Optus was fined A$1.5 million (S$1.3 million) by Australian authorities for breaching public safety rules.

Media reports on Wednesday (Mar 6) said the fine came after the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) found that Optus failed to upload the information of nearly 200,000 customers between January 2021 and September 2023 to a database used by emergency services.

Optus failed to upload the data via its outsourced supplier Prvidr to the Integrated Public Number Database (IPND), said Acma member Samantha Yorke.

The database is used by emergency services to provide location information and alerts to the police, ambulance and fire brigade. Failure to provide the needed information may hinder emergency services, posing public safety concerns.

“While we are not aware of anyone being directly harmed due to the non-compliance in this case, it’s alarming that Optus placed so many customers in this position for so long. Optus cannot outsource its obligations, even if part of the process is being undertaken by a third party,” Yorke added.

The Australian media watchdog has accepted a court-enforceable undertaking from Optus that requires an independent review of its IPND compliance.

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If the review finds that Optus failed to comply with the industry code, it could face federal court proceedings and fines of up to A$10 million per breach.

Optus apologised for the non-compliance and accepts that proper audits and checks were not in place to ensure IPND obligations. “Optus accepts Acma’s findings and has agreed to an enforceable undertaking to complete an independent review of the processes used to manage compliance with our IPND obligations for these partner brands and make any further improvements if required,” said Optus’ spokesperson.

The non-compliance over public safety rules added to the several incidents that risk public trust in Optus.

In September 2022, nearly 10 million of Optus customers had their personal data stolen in a cyberattack.

Last November, about 10 million Australians and 400,000 businesses were affected by a network failure. Optus admitted this January that almost 2,700 calls to Triple-0 did not go through during the 14-hour outage, exceeding the 228 estimated.

Singtel’s FY2023 third-quarter bottom line, as a result, declined 12.5 per cent mainly due to a provision for costs related to the November outage.

Despite the incidents, Singtel still values its stake in Optus as “strategic” and believes in the long-term outlook of the business. The local telco giant denied a media report saying that it was exploring divestment of Optus’ enterprise and business division in January.

Singtel’s : Z74 0% shares were trading up 0.4 per cent or S$0.01 at S$2.32 as at 9.02 am on Wednesday, after the news.