SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has expressed his condolences for the deaths of four people linked to network outages of Australian telco Optus, which is owned by Singtel. 

“First of all, I can fully understand the anger, frustration and outrage by what happened,” Mr Wong said in an interview with Australian broadcaster ABC released on Monday (Oct 6). 

“And I would like to extend my condolences to everyone who has been impacted by the outage, especially the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives.”   

Optus suffered two emergency call outages less than a fortnight apart, affecting thousands of Australian customers. The outages were also linked to four deaths because customers were unable to get timely aid.

When asked what actions he was personally taking to ensure such outages would not happen again, Mr Wong said Singapore does not interfere with commercial operations.

“As far as Singapore is concerned, while we may be shareholder through Temasek, we have always operated on a very clear cardinal principle that we do not get involved in commercial operations. We do not direct commercial matters,” Mr Wong said.

Mr Wong is making his first official visit to Australia as prime minister from Monday to Thursday.

He noted Singtel CEO’s visit to Australia last week and said he hoped the telco would rectify the issue as soon as possible. 

“They will, I am sure, cooperate fully with the authorities, with the regulator, and work closely with Optus and whichever other independent parties that have been appointed to conduct a full investigation into what happened,” Mr Wong said.

“And I hope they get to the bottom of it as soon as possibl...