Telco 'cowboys' not held to account after prior outage

Australia is being urged to tame the "wild west" culture plaguing the telco industry after Optus experienced another serious triple-zero outage.

The major outage has been linked to four deaths and was the second time in two years an Optus network issue prevented Australians accessing the emergency line.

Optus chief executive Stephen Rue faces mounting pressure to step down after revelations the telco giant failed to implement recommendations from a review into the company's previous outage in 2023.

While telecommunications expert Mark Gregory believes there's a strong rationale for him to step down, the problem goes beyond one company.

"The self-regulatory environment that the telecommunications industry has been under for the past 30 years isn't working," the RMIT University associate