Singapore's Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has expressed condolences to the families of four Australians who lost their lives during a technical failure of the Optus network last month. The incident, which occurred on September 18, resulted in a 13-hour outage that affected hundreds of emergency triple-0 calls. Among the deceased was an eight-week-old baby.

Wong acknowledged the anger and frustration surrounding the incident. "First of all, I can fully understand the anger, frustration and outrage by what happened," he said. "And I would like to certainly extend my condolences to everyone who's been impacted by the outage, especially the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives."

The Prime Minister's comments came in response to inquiries about the Optus network failure, given that the Singaporean government has a significant stake in the telecommunications company. Optus is owned by Singaporean conglomerate Singtel, which is majority-owned by Temasek Holdings, an investment firm owned by the Singapore government.

Wong clarified that the Singapore government maintains a hands-off approach regarding Optus's operations. "As far as Singapore is concerned, while we may be [a] shareholder through Temasek, we have always operated on a very clear cardinal principle that we do not get involved in commercial operations," he stated. He emphasized that the government expects companies to comply with local laws and act responsibly in their business practices.

In the wake of the outage, Singtel's CEO Yuen Kuan Moon visited Australia and met with Communications Minister Anika Wells. Following their discussions, Wells instructed Optus to engage an independent party to review its systems to prevent future incidents. Wong expressed hope that the investigation would quickly identify the root causes of the outage and restore public confidence in the network.

"They will, I'm 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," Wong said.

Yuen Kuan Moon has publicly apologized to the families affected by the outage. Optus chair John Arthur stated that the company is committed to collaborating with the government to address the situation, although he did not provide specific details on the measures being taken.

The September 18 outage was not the first for Optus. A second outage occurred on September 28, affecting emergency calls for thousands of customers in Dapto, New South Wales. This incident followed a major failure two years prior, which resulted in penalties exceeding $12 million and prompted a comprehensive review of the company's operations.