(Reuters) – Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, the parent company of Australian telecoms provider Optus, said on Thursday that its planned software update was not the cause of an outage last week, contradicting claims by Optus earlier this week.
More than 10 million Australians were affected by the 12-hour network blackout at the Singapore Telecommunications-owned (SingTel) telco on November 8, frustrating customers and raising wider concerns about its telecommunications infrastructure.
Optus had said earlier this week that an initial investigation found the company’s network was affected by “changes to routing information from an international peering network” following a “routine software upgrade”.
SingTel confirmed that the Singtel Internet Exchange (STiX) is one of Optus’ international networks connecting to the global internet, but denied that the routine software upgrade was the cause.
“We are aware that Optus experienced a network failure following the upgrade when a significant increase in addresses being propagated through their network triggered preset failsafes,” SingTel said.
SingTel’s statement comes a day before Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin faces an Australian Senate inquiry into the massive outage.
(Reporting by Sameer Manekar in Bengaluru; Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil)
