A week after Nokia reported a 54% drop in quarterly profit, Australian telco Optus has moved to take control of network operations previously outsourced to the company, following last month’s catastrophic Triple Zero outage that was linked to three deaths.

The outage exposed failures in Optus’ network monitoring systems which was previously outsourced to Nokia teams in India and Australia.

Optus CEO Stephen Rue told a Senate inquiry today, 3 November, that “personnel failings” at Nokia contributed to the incident.

Rue, who has rejected calls for his resignation, admitted there were multiple “escalation failures” during the crisis.

The company was first alerted to the outage at 2:51pm on September 18, initially affecting around 10 calls. By 8:05pm, it became clear that 100 emergency calls had been missed, yet this information did not reach Rue until the next morning.

He contacted the Australian Communications and Media Authority at 2:30pm and the federal government at 4pm on September 19, prompting criticism from senators over the delayed response.

Optus is now accelerating plans to bring network monitoring activities back in-house, which was originally set for completion in May 2027.

It will add 150 new staff to a “process centre of excellence” to overhaul procedures across the business.

The telco is also hiring 300 additional roles in Australian call centres to support emergency services and vulnerable customers.

Rue said leadership changes would “set back the transformation underway” at the telco when asked about his potential resignation.

Optus chairman John Arthur confirmed executives would be held accountable but supported Rue’s continuation as CEO.

Nokia’s recent Q3 earnings had shown strong revenue growth, particularly in network infrastructure, but net profit tumbled to €80 million (A$140 million) amid rising costs and weaker software contributions.

Nokia CEO Justin Hotard had described Nokia as “uniquely positioned” to benefit from the AI-driven connectivity demand, but the loss of Optus’ contract comes at a sensitive time ahead of the company’s strategic update next month.

The Senate inquiry, chaired by Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, continues to examine the outage and its handling, including whether Optus complied with reporting obligations.

Rue declined to confirm whether he had met families affected by the outage or if compensation discussions had begun, stressing that “the privacy of the families must be paramount.”