BENGALURU (July 30): Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) confirmed on Thursday that it was in talks with several parties over a potential stake sale in Australian telecoms unit Optus, but said there was no certainty the discussions would lead to a deal.

The Singapore-listed telecoms group did not name the parties and did not respond to a Reuters request for details. Optus, owned by Singtel since 2001, is Australia's second-largest telecommunications provider.

The stake-sale talks coincide with mounting regulatory pressure on Optus over repeated outages involving Australia's emergency call service, including a September network disruption linked to two deaths that prompted legal action by the country's telecoms regulator on Thursday.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) alleged Optus breached two legal obligations on 1,005 occasions during the September outage, which was caused by a series of failures during a firewall upgrade.

The latest action follows an earlier enforcement action by the ACMA after the Optus November 2023 outage, when the company paid more than A$12 million (US$8.35 million) in infringement notice penalties for breaches relating to emergency calls.

"The recurrence of a major network outage affecting emergency calls so soon after the November 2023 outage is a significant concern and one of the reasons the ACMA has decided to take this matter to court," chair Nerida O'Loughlin said.

The telecoms regulator said it is seeking penalties of up to A$250,000 per contravention.

Optus said it was unable to determine the quantum of any potential penalties at this stage.

Earlier this year, Singtel said it was open to bringing in an Australian minority partner for Optus. Reuters reported in 2024 that Singtel was in advanced talks to sell a significant stake in Optus to Brookfield Asset Management, although the company denied a deal was imminent.

Shares of Singtel were down 0.9% at S$4.57 in Singapore, as of 0646 GMT.

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